


Trippin' on Skies, Sippin' Waterfalls

by snakeofalltrades



Series: Eight Legs, Nine Lives [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Harley Keener, BAMF Michelle Jones, Bisexual Harley Keener, Bisexual Peter Parker, Canon Compliant, Chaos Squad TM, Eventual Romance, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Inspired by Twitter, Irondad, M/M, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark Coparenting Peter Parker, Michelle Jones Is a Good Bro, Michelle Jones is a Little Shit, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant, Peter Parker Angst, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Peter Parker is a Mess, Peter Parker-centric, Peter's fake dating himself, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Pride, Pride Parades, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Summer Romance, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Trans Male Character, Trans Peter Parker, Twitter, Would I die for Harley Keener, Yes I would, but it's not explicitly referenced, not actually tho, spiderson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24397102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snakeofalltrades/pseuds/snakeofalltrades
Summary: Peter Parker’s life was turned upside-down the day Mr. Stark followed him on social media. Three months later, he’s got several million Twitter followers and the whole world thinks he’s dating Spider-Man.A lot of it went wrong, some things went right, but the best thing to come out of it all is a certain Tennessee boy by the name of Harley Keener.(Or, Harley comes to New York for the summer, and Peter's head over heels for this southern boy.)
Relationships: Harley Keener & Peter Parker, Harley Keener & Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Harley Keener & Tony Stark, Harley Keener/Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Pepper Potts, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Michelle Jones & Harley Keener & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Shuri, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker/Spider-Man (fake)
Series: Eight Legs, Nine Lives [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1454914
Comments: 176
Kudos: 1254





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Танцы до утра](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24750730) by [Cis_moll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cis_moll/pseuds/Cis_moll)



> Hello! If you are new to the 8L9L universe, you technically *can* read this as a stand-alone fic, but I suggest you read from part 1. But hey, you do you :)
> 
> If you’re here because you read the first three parts, thanks for stickin’ around. It’s WILD that I’ve been writing this for almost a solid year now, so whether you just clicked in or have been here for a while, much love to all of you, dear readers.
> 
> This is currently rated T and doesn’t have any warnings, but that’ll prob change (currently it’s mostly cuz I have a fucking sailor’s mouth and so does Peter Parker lmao).
> 
> And of course, I’d be remiss if I left out the dedication: to a superb Ant — you know who you are. You now have four whole fics dedicated to you. Whatever will you do with the fame?
> 
> Anyways. Happy pride month, y’all. Let the shenanigans ensue.

**_May 14, 2017_ **

Tony had never actually told Peter, but Harley had been contacting him _non-stop_ to come to New York and actually meet Peter. And Spider-Man. Both of whom the kid wouldn’t quit salivating over. 

Honestly.

Why didn’t he tell Peter? Well, between everything that had been going on with the Accords, Geneva, the media attention due to him dating himself (which, Tony had to admit, was still both really fucking funny and impressive Peter had kept it up this long), and being knighted as an Avenger during the disaster that had been the Stark Industries field trip, the kid had had a lot on his plate.

Plus, he’d mentioned to Tony that he and Harley already texted pretty often, and given the blush that crept up Peter’s neck and ears every time the subject was mentioned, Peter was _also_ having some sort of feelings over Harley. Although at least the spider kid was less vocal about it so he didn’t want to rip his ears out the way he did whenever he talked with Harley over the phone.

But after weeks and _weeks_ of asking, the kid had finally convinced him. Peter, he’d noticed (even though Peter was trying to be subtle about it and not show it), was excited at the prospect of Harley coming over for the summer. So Tony, after having a really long conversation with Mrs. Keener herself (and Pepper stepping in to offer better words than “yeah I’ll protect him, I’m Iron Man”), had gotten the whole thing set up.

Now he had to call Harley to let the kid know. And then he’d tell Peter, though there was no telling how quick Harley would be and if he’d get to Peter before Tony did. 

“Fri, patch a call through to Harley, would you?” He raised a mug of coffee to his lips, only to find it had long since gone cold. 

The AI responded swiftly and mechanically, a comforting familiar presence in the otherwise empty lab. Peter hadn’t been to the Tower today. “Sure thing, boss.”

Tony set down the _Stark Industries_ mug on the lab table, amidst the clutter of tools and metal scraps, nuts and bolts. Harley picked the phone up on the second ring. 

“It’s half past midnight.”

Tony glanced at his watch, eyes widening. So it was. _Fuck, Fri, you couldn’t have warned me?_ “Sorry, kid. Lost track of time. I can call back in the morning.”

“Nah, I was up already anyway. So what is it that’s so important that Tony Stark is calling me at the wee hours of the mornin’?” The kid’s voice and its slightly southern twang faded away, as if he had set his phone down a ways away to keep working on whatever he had been tinkering on. Tony shook his head bemusedly at the thought. “You’re not gonna crash into my garage again, are you?”

Tony scoffed. “Pfft. No. Actually, I was gonna give you some good news, but if you’re gonna be all sassy I guess you can find out tomorrow.” He gave a loud yawn. “I should get to sleep, and so should you, kid.”

“Fuck you, what is it?”

“No need to sound so ungrateful. And language. I did just manage to pull enough strings to get you to come to New York in a few weeks.”

“Hol’ up. What?”

“You’re coming to visit for the summer, kid.”

“Thank _god!_ Can I get a YEEHAW? FINALLY. It’s not like I’ve been asking for years.”

“Yeah, but you got really insistent once Peter became part of the picture.” Tony smirked, even though Harley couldn’t see. “Also, it’s not like you haven’t been to the Big Apple before.”

"Listen, old man. First of all, that was for two days and I barely remember it. Also, I’m not gonna go around breaking that boundary when Peter has Spidey. Who do you think I am?” Tony could hear the undertone of embarrassment under his smooth response and smirked to himself again.

“Harley Keener, that’s who. Not as if you ever had much of that so-called ‘Southern hospitality’.” Harley scoffed on the other end of the line, and Tony heard a scrape and then the running motor of some sort of drill in the background. 

“I let you lay low in my garage when the world thought you were dead. Oh, and fixed and charged your suit, by the way.” He scoffed again, then muttered to himself, “No Southern hospitality my _ass.”_

The drill turned off. “Thanks for letting me come, Tony.”

Tony smiled. “Hey, I owed you one. Besides, I can’t just let you rot in the middle of nowhere.”

“Hey now. Rose Hill has its quirks. So how long will I be there? When can I meet Peter? Or Spider-Man? Can I work in your lab?” Ah, there was the boyish excitement Tony had been waiting to hear, creeping back into Harley’s voice.

Absently, and not for the first time, Tony wondered why on Earth Peter hadn’t told Harley about Spider-Man. He’d told the kid Harley could be trusted, and even though they’d clearly hit it off over the phone, for some reason Peter still had the other kid under the impression that he was dating his alter-ego. Which would certainly get really interesting when Harley came to New York and, as he was bound to do, asked to meet Spidey. 

“Your mom said you can stay all summer, but if you’re learning something. So yeah, I’ll be putting you to work in the labs.” He paused. “You know there’s been a shit ton of media attention on Peter recently, so, I mean, hopefully we can keep him more out of the spotlight this summer. And _yes,_ you hormonal teenager, you’ll get to meet Peter and the whole cohort.”

“Fuck off.”

“Hey. Language.”

“Says you.” Tony could _hear_ the eye roll through the phone. 

“Anyway, you might want to bring a potato gun.”

“Do I get to meet the Avengers?”

Tony laughed. “Go get some sleep.”

“Says you,” Harley repeated.

“Yes, yes, I’m a terrible role model and all that. Now go to bed or your mother will cancel this whole trip.”

“Yessir. Goodnight!” Harley chirped, before promptly hanging up on Tony. 

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, even though he was smiling. “These kids are gonna be the death of me, Fri.”

“Perhaps, sir,” she responded amusedly.

\---

Peter was still awake doing homework when the text came in. He’d spent a long time out as Spider-Man today before going back home to the apartment (where May had yet again burnt her newest recipe), and since it was almost finals week, he was now stuck rubbing his eyes tiredly and staring in vain at the English paper before him.

Chem and math, he could do. But man, _fuck_ English.

His saving grace, apparently, was Harley. 

_Text from: cowboy_

_12:47 AM_

_cowboy:_ guess what

 _cowboy:_ im coming to new york this summer!!

 _peter-man:_ so its confirmed?!!!

 _cowboy:_ yep all set up. In only a few weeks you will be graced with my presence

 _cowboy:_ its weird we havent actually met. I feel like I know you so well already

 _peter-man:_ yesssss 

_peter-man:_ this summer’s gonna b so fun

 _peter-man:_ me too, man. Its weird

 _peter-man:_ we haven’t even FaceTimed. am I gonna b surprised by ur voice when we meet 

_cowboy:_ eh, probably not. Tony likes to make fun of my accent though. but you will be absolutely floored by the beauty that is my face

 _peter-man:_ lmao ive seen yr face harley u may b smart enough not to put it on twitter but i do follow u on Insta

 _cowboy:_ I’m wounded. my face is much prettier in real life

 _cowboy:_ however, now we cannot ft or call bc we gotta save our voices for the real meeting

 _peter-man:_ ok, I see u. Fair enough

 _cowboy:_ thank god im comin to ny i finally get to meet the internet famous SPIDEYPARKER

Peter hesitated. Now that Harley was actually going to be coming for the summer, he had to figure out what the fuck he was going to do about the whole Spider-Man situation. Mr. Stark had left it open to him, telling him he could tell Harley if he wanted to. But now he didn’t know what to do.

Damn it. He should have told Harley about this way back when the whole Twitter mess first started. Peter hated the thought of keeping a secret from Harley when they’d been getting along so well. But now that he’d been keeping it a secret, he didn’t know how Harley would react if he found out. Maybe he’d get mad at Peter. Especially after thinking he knew him so well when Peter was really hiding such a big part of his life from him.

Peter glanced at the paper in front of him again, blinking tiredly at the yellow highlights he’d made so far. He could annotate this during lunch tomorrow.

_peter-man:_ yea, it’ll be fun

 _peter-man:_ hey, I’m off to bed. ttyl

He switched off his phone. Whatever Harley responded with, he could deal with it tomorrow too.

\---

**_May 17, 2017_ **

Harley had packed within almost two days of receiving Tony’s call. Sure, it wasn’t like he was leaving for another two weeks, but a sixteen year old kid could be excited, right?

Abby, his younger sister, had been jumping around the house as soon as she’d learned Harley was going to New York and was going to meet the infamous Peter. “Can ya get his _autograph_ for me _,_ Harley?” She giggled. 

Their mother, who was carefully putting away the breakfast dishes, scolded her. “Hush now, Abigail. I don’t see the big deal with this Peter anyways.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “He’s been all over the media, Ma! Jus’ cuz we live in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean you can’t see stuff on the news!”

Harley snorted as their mom aimed a playful swat at Abby’s hay-colored hair. “I’m sure Peter will give you an autograph if you’re this insistent, Abbs.”

“You’re gonna pester the hell outta that poor boy this summer, Harls,” their mom said. “I shouldn’t’a let Tony take you.”

“I promise I’ll behave, Ma.”

She huffed, smiling, and turned to Abby. “And I thought you were more interested in Spider-Man, anyways?”

Abby giggled. “No, ma, that’s Harley! He’s the obsessed one!”

Harley felt his cheeks heat. “Am _not!_ ” He swatted at his younger sister, but she danced out of the way. 

Abby began singing. “Harley and Spider-Man, sittin’ in a tree. K-I-S--”

“That’s enough outta you, young lady. Go on, you should be gettin’ ready for school.”

Abby grinned at Harley and skipped off to her room, floorboards creaking beneath her feet as she did.

His mother turned back to him. “I’m thinkin’ this summer will do you some good, Harley. Lord knows you can’t stay in this small town forever.” She smiled, the skin around her blue eyes wrinkling easily from the exposure to the sun.

He leaned in and gave her a hug. “Thanks for letting me go, ma.”

She ruffled his hair. “Now, you’d better get your work in this week with Jack before you leave town. You know he needs help working the horses.”

Harley sighed. “Eh, better than school.” Jack, the old man who owned the ranch the Keener’s house was on, wasn’t exactly _nice,_ but he never went out of his way to attack him the way Harley’s ‘schoolmates’ did. In Jack’s mind, Harley was good at riding horses, and that was all he cared. So Harley had built up a habit of ditching school to work with Jack. Not that school was doing him any good.

His mother gave him a sad look. “I hope you make some friends in New York this summer. If only people ‘round here weren’t so damn stubborn—”

Harley cut her off. “Not all of ‘em.”

Macy raised her eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. “You get your sister to school, now.”

“Always, ma. I’ll be down at Jack’s later today.”

Harley ignored the knot that had begun to form in his throat. He was going to New York City — he could last a few more weeks here. And like he’d said, not everyone in Rose Hill was terrible.

\---

Ned groaned, throwing his head back on the chair. “Ugh. _End_ me. Please, Peter. You have super strength. You could snuff me out right now, and that way I wouldn’t have to do the chem final.”

MJ simply raised an eyebrow. “Or, you know, you could ask Peter to _help_ you with chem, cuz he’s stupidly good at it?”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “That almost sounded like a compliment, MJ.”

“Pfft. In your dreams, loser.”

The three of them were spread out in Peter’s living room, stacks of notebooks and highlighted notes and flashcards haphazardly thrown all over the floor. Well, at least in Peter’s case. MJ was flipping through a single notebook.

“Ned, you’re gonna be fine. You’re really good at chemistry!” Peter tried, rolling over to his stomach and propping his head up with his hands.

Ned shot him a “really?” look. “You’re the genius, Peter. Not me.”

“Says the guy who hacked Stark tech on his first try.”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t _chemistry_.”

Peter heard a key unlock the door and May came in. “Oh, hi there, guys. Peter, I thought you were working in the super-cool-new-lab-that-was-made-just-for-you today with Tony?”

Peter let his face fall into the floor. His voice came out muffled. “Hi, Aunt May. No, I have to focus on finals. Remember what Principal Morita said?”

May shuffled to the kitchen. “Was it along the lines of, ‘if you don’t ace all your classes you’ll have to take summer school because you’ve missed so much class this year’?”

MJ laughed as Peter let out a defeated, “Ha ha.”

Ned piped up. “Speaking of which, you _still_ haven’t taken us to see the lab? When do we get to see it?”

“It looks exactly like the lab I worked in with Mr. Stark before, Ned. Just smaller. But if you really want to go —”

“What kind of question is that? Of _course!”_

“After finals.”

MJ clicked her tongue. “I don’t think so. You’ll be _way_ too concerned drooling over Harley Keener once finals are over. That, or you’ll be dying in summer school.” She reached a hand to Ned’s shoulder and audibly sighed. “It looks like Peter will be abandoning us this summer.”

May laughed from the kitchen, where she was already whipping out bowls and ingredients to no doubt make something terrible. “I can’t wait to meet this Harley. Are any of you staying for dinner?”

“Thanks, Mrs. Parker, but I actually should be heading out in a few minutes,” said MJ. 

“Same here,” said Ned, shooting Peter an apologetic look. “But I’ll stick around for a little longer. Peter, chem. Please. Or kill me. Your choice.”

Peter rolled his eyes, ignoring the buzz of his phone and pulling out his chem notes. 

\---

Over dinner (Thai it was, as May had ended up burning the lasagna), Peter picked at his food. It had been a long week at school so far, and finals coming up wasn’t the worst of it. For some reason, everyone had decided the last few weeks of school were the perfect time to befriend Peter Parker before summer break came and they didn’t see him until next year. As if trying to text him and budge up to him now was going to make them best buds all of the sudden.

“What’s up?” May asked, attempting to snatch a noodle with her chopsticks. It slipped off. “I know that face. Was it not going in for the internship? Summer school?”

“Nah,” Peter sighed, sitting back in his chair. “Everyone’s just being… weirdly nice?”

May’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I’m gonna need more of an explanation.”

“Remember when the whole thing started, and someone leaked my phone number and everyone was texting me, trying to get into my ‘fame’?” May nodded. “Well, it’s like that again, except people keep trying to talk to me in the halls, ask how ‘Spider-Man’ is doing, taking pictures when they think I’m not looking, stuff like that. I’m… I’m just really sick of it.”

Aunt May set down her chopsticks and leaned forward. “I know, Peter. And, to be honest, the fame isn’t going to go away. Maybe not for the rest of your life.” She frowned. “I was talking with Pepper yesterday, and she told me how hard it was for Tony to manage the fame at first.”

Peter scoffed. “No way. Mr. Stark?”

May nodded. “As weird as it sounds, I don’t think _anyone_ can really be unaffected by fame. Everyone really wants to get in on it until they realize what it’s actually like.”

Peter didn’t respond, his mind thinking back to the hateful and overtly sexual comments and messages he’d gotten. “I kind of just wish this hadn’t happened.”

“I know it sucks right now, honey, but there’s so many good things that came out of it, right? You have a Stark internship, you even got _your own_ lab. You met Harley, and not to mention the whole Avenger thing. You’re a brilliant kid, Peter, and I know everything’s hard right now, but it’ll get better, okay?”

“You sound like Ms. Potts.” Peter smiled a bit. 

Aunt May attacked the noodles with her chopsticks again. “What can I say? Do you think I’d make a good CEO?”

“Duh. You’d be the best.” Peter smiled a bit more, heart feeling a little less heavy, and dug into his own noodle bowl.

\---

**_May 26, 2017_ **

_Group chat: brainless idiots + MJ_

_guy in the chair:_ WOOT!! GOODBYE SOPHOMORE YEAR!!!

 _MJ:_ Well, as long as Peter doesn’t have to do summer school.

 _guy in the chair:_ i got my fingers crossed for u peter

 _peter-man:_ eyyyyyyyy i PASSED all my classes no extra school for me

 _guy in the chair:_ EYYYYYYY

 _MJ:_ [i’msurroundedbyidiotsscar.gif]

 _MJ:_ So when does Harley get here?

 _peter-man:_ three days!

 _MJ:_ And are you going to tell him about Spider-Man?

 _peter-man:_ no

 _guy in the chair:_ you baffle me

 _guy in the chair:_ Ten bucks says he figures it out in the first ten days.

 _peter-man:_ i will not take that bet

 _MJ:_ Ten bucks says he figures it out in the first five.

 _guy in the chair:_ oh your ON

 _MJ: *_ You’re

\---

  
  


**_May 29, 2017_ **

The day Harley Keener arrived, Peter was supposed to be at the Tower by ten a.m. Well, it was ten a.m., and Peter was kind of really still swinging around Queens, because there was a high-speed car chase. And he had to stop a bus from being crushed. Again. 

“Peter, there is an incoming call from Mr. Stark,” Karen said through his suit. 

“I can’t right now, send him to voi—”

“Mr. Stark is forcing the call through, Peter.”

“Well _, shit_.” Having a built-in phone created by Tony Stark had its downsides. One of those downsides was that Tony himself could force his calls through now. 

“I heard that,” said Mr. Stark’s voice in his ear. “Language. Also, by the way, where are you? You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago.”

Peter winced. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten, he’d just… lost track of time. 

“Sorry, Mr. Stark, I was just cleaning up this mess—”

“On 168th street? Yeah, that’s what F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. Car chase, wasn’t it? Hopefully you caught them and are on your way _right now_ , Pete.”

“Uh, yeah. Mmhmm, I’m on my way.” No, he wasn’t.

“No, you’re not. As a matter of fact, your tracker says that you’re still heading along 168th.”

“Mr. Stark, I’ll be there as soon as I can—”

“I’m watching you.”

 _Big brother’s watching_ , Peter said to himself ironically as Tony hung up, swinging around a corner to keep the dark blue SUV in his view. 

\---

Peter swung through the sliding window on the 90th floor of Stark Tower at no later than 10:42 a.m. In his defense, the guy in the blue SUV _really_ didn’t want to give up without a fight. Turns out all he had in the end was some hard drugs in the seat cushions. 

Peter landed on all fours on the ceiling and made sure the bedroom was empty before slipping down, taking off his mask, and pressing the button in the center of his chest. The suit instantly loosened and dropped to the floor, leaving him in just his boxers. He had barely kicked the suit under the bed and reached haphazardly for a white t-shirt in his closet when the door to his room opened.

And Harley Keener walked in. 

Harley Keener, who was (something that somehow Peter hadn’t noticed, hadn’t realized, in the months of following the guy on Twitter and Instagram and as Mr. Stark had neglected to mention) _hot._

(Maybe he was just more attractive in person.)

(Or maybe Peter had just been ignoring his feelings and they all just hit him at once.)

Blonde curls spilled down in front of his blue — _blue, such a pretty blue_ — eyes. He was wearing jeans and a grey flannel with the arms rolled up to his elbows. His skin was golden, as if kissed by the sun. And he had _freckles_ — freckles splattered over his nose and forehead and cheeks, which were turning red very quickly. 

_Right_ . Because Peter was very nearly naked. _Great first impression, Parker._

“Whoops, sorry,” Harley squeaked. And he turned around and walked out. 

Peter stood in the center of his room, frozen, for a few minutes. _Did I really just meet Harley Keener like_ that _? In my_ boxers _?_ He smacked a hand to his face. _God, I’m such a dumbass._

\---

Harley was probably overreacting. Right? 

Tony had said the bathroom was down the hall and to the left. Problem is, there were two doors to the left. He’d opened the one at the end, thinking it was the bathroom—

And found himself face to face with a familiar boy, the one whose pretty face had been all over the internet for several months now, in nothing but boxers. 

And yes, Harley would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought Peter was hot before, when all he had to look at were old Instagram and Twitter posts and of course, the endless stream of paparazzi photos. But now, the boy Harley had been pining over for months now was standing right in front of him, in nothing but boxers. Were those _abs?_

It took Harley a moment to realize he was staring. _(Yes, those were abs.)_

As soon as he did, he mumbled out an apology, and left as quickly as possible. He entered the other door — the bathroom, this time, thank God — and stood for a second, contemplating what had just happened. 

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._ What had Peter been doing in that bedroom in nothing but boxers? Harley reddened at the thought and pushed it away. Peter was in love with _Spider-Man._ And yeah, they’d been talking for a while over text, but… the first time they actually met, in person, he hadn’t just barged in on Peter changing, but he’d visibly paused and checked him out. Harley hoped, knowing how futile it was, that Peter hadn’t noticed. 

_Fuck._ Harley pressed his hands to his ears, hoping it might cool them down. He’d really just made a massive fool of himself. _It’s fine_ , he told himself. _This isn’t gonna be awkward at all._ After taking several breaths, he walked back to the lounge, where Tony was waiting.

“Did you find the bathroom okay?” 

“What? Oh, uh, yeah.”

Tony frowned at him. “Something up?”

Harley hoped he wasn’t still very red. “Uh, no. Nothing.”

“Well, Peter should be here any minute now.”

 _Great_ . _So he can look me in the eye and I have to pretend I wasn’t staring at his abs._

 _Those abs. Damn, he was ripped, what the hell_ — _?_

Harley’s thoughts were cut off again. Peter Parker had just entered the room, clothed this time, his brown hair mostly slicked back with a few curls popping out at the front. There was no indication of any abs or toned muscles under his shirt — if anything, Peter looked pretty small — and Harley briefly wondered if he’d hallucinated it. 

“Well, look who decided to show up.” Tony was glaring at Peter. 

Peter had the good sense to look bashful, and in that moment Harley subconsciously — or perhaps consciously — decided that there was literally nothing prettier than Peter Parker’s brown doe eyes. _Fuck, Keener, stop falling in love with him. He’s with someone else._ “Sorry about that. I got caught up.” _See? He probably was out WITH SPIDER-MAN and that’s why he got caught up._ But all of Harley’s thoughts melted away as Peter caught his eye. “Hi, Harley. Can’t believe we’re finally meeting. You’re… taller than I thought.” Peter didn’t let slip any hint of what had happened earlier.

“You’re shorter than I thought. And god dammit you sound like a New Yorker.” Harley quipped back, hoping they could both forget what had just happened. Indeed, Peter was maybe a half a head shorter than him.

“Well you sound like a cowboy. Just as I predicted.”

“Would shaking hands be awkward given we’ve known each other for several months?” 

Peter let out a small laugh, and Harley caught Tony rolling his eyes. “Maybe. But hey. Formal introductions are nice, right?” He stuck out his hand.

Harley shook it, trying to ignore how strong Peter’s grip seemed. _Keep it together, Keener. Tony will know something’s up._ “Tony never shuts up about you.”

Tony scoffed. “That’s rich coming from you, kid.” Thankfully, he didn’t mention anything else. “You know, I was awkward as a fifteen year old, but you two are so much worse.”

“I’m sixteen, old man,” Harley protested. 

Tony ignored him. “Anyway, I was gonna make you join me and Pete in the lab today, but Pepper thinks you should get a tour of Stark Industries today instead. And, since I’m Pepper’s little bitch, you will be getting a tour of Stark Industries today instead. Led by your good pen pal Mr. Parker here.”

Peter groaned in protest, and Harley tried not to let his heart sink. Maybe he’d just scared him off when he’d busted into his room while Peter was changing and Peter didn’t want to spend time with him now. Or maybe he had a date with Spidey. _Nice move, Keener._

But instead, Peter said, “I had to give my own class a tour of Stark Industries, Mr. Stark, remember how that went? Anyway, I’m pretty sure I promised Harley he could meet MJ and Ned, actually, so…”

“Yeah, and he has all summer for that. Just show him around the main levels, so he doesn’t get lost. That’s all I ask. And you’ll have all the time you want to work in the lab later, kid,” Tony said, putting his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “ _And_ I’m sure Harley also would like to see New York City in all of its sweaty, hot summer glory.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “I doubt it’s hotter and sweatier than Tennessee, Mr. Stark.”

Harley grinned. “As true as that may be, it does snow in the winter in Rose Hill. But summer is terrible. Bet New York ain’t got nothing on it.”

Peter smiled and looked up at Harley. Harley’s heart skipped a beat when he noticed Peter’s dark, thick eyelashes. _Big brown innocent eyes, like Bambi. His eyes are so pretty._

_STOP IT. Jeez._

If Tony noticed anything odd about Harley, he said nothing. Instead, he said, “See? I knew you two would hit it off. Now don’t blow up the Tower. Please.”

\---

Peter decided he’d take Harley down to the higher level labs first, the ones located below his own lab on the fifty-fifth floor. He didn’t expect Harley to turn to him in the elevator and say, “Sorry I walked in on you earlier. I thought it was the bathroom.”

Peter let out a laugh, hoping he didn’t sound nervous. “No worries.” And then, jokingly, “Just don’t tell Spidey.” _Why would you say that? Why? Now he’s gonna latch onto the Spider-Man stuff._

Harley scoffed, grinning “I’d never. Not that I’d have any way to tell him.” Harley cleared his throat. “Speaking of which, do you know when he’ll be around the Tower?”

“Ah, I forgot, you’re thirsty for my boyfriend and can’t wait to meet him.” Peter rolled his eyes, internally smacking himself. Why hadn’t he told Harley about the Spidey thing? He could tell him right now. But the more he referenced Spider-Man, the deeper he dug his own grave. 

_Come on then, out with it. Tell him, quit stalling. Why are you stalling anyway? It’s not like Harley’s gonna hate you for being Spider-Man._

A smaller, more selfish voice in the back of his head spoke up. _If you told him, you might actually have a chance at being with him_.

Peter shoved the thought away. He’d met Harley in person for the first time ten minutes ago. This was a stupid crush — pure physical attraction — and it would go away soon enough.

Harley’s voice brought him out of his reverie. “Hey, you good? I’m not actually gonna steal Spidey from you.”

Peter quickly responded. “Yeah, sorry. Just spaced out for a bit. Um, I’ll take you to the interns lab first. You can meet some of them.”

Peter didn’t miss the frown on his face at the change in subject, but Harley moved on quickly. “Ah, how could I forget. You actually do work for Stark Industries. I know about Spidey’s tech, but Tony mentioned you also help out with Avengers gear?”

“Yeah. I work on his weaponry, mostly. Sometimes I help out with other Avengers gear, but I haven’t really got the chance to work on some of their stuff. The rogues, I mean.” Peter winced. “After Geneva, they all moved to the compound. I haven’t had the time to actually do stuff with their gear for the most part. And Mr. Stark sometimes lets me work with Iron Man designs, but… well. I figure you’d do really well with that after the Mandarin, huh? So I mostly work on Spider-Man’s gear, yeah, his webshooters, and updates to his suit, work on his AI, stuff like that.”

Harley ignored the comment about the rogue Avengers, thankfully. “Man, I’d love to get to work on an Iron Man suit again. But that’s so cool! I know you won that competition by recreating the webs to get the internship. But does Spider-Man shoot his webs from his wrist or, I mean, how does it work?” 

Peter grinned. This he could talk about all day. “Well, he doesn’t make his webs biologically, if that’s what you’re asking. He manufactured a sort of web fluid, and then I designed webshooters for him. They attach to the wrist of the suit, and I fill them with web fluid cartridges, and he can shoot them using the mechanism on the webshooter.”

“That’s gotta be a really powerful device. I mean, he shoots those webs really fast and far, right?”

Peter launched into a long and detailed explanation of the mechanism in the webshooter that shot out the webs, and how he and Mr. Stark had worked to create different webshooter combinations. 

He stopped talking when they left the elevator, and winced. Harley was probably bored of him already. “Sorry. I was probably boring you with that.”

“Nah, actually, I think it’s awesome. I love mechanics and stuff. Remember, I _did_ help Tony fix his suit during the Mandarin.”

Peter smiled. “True. You must’ve been a genius to do that at what, age ten?”

“Eleven. But yeah. And no more than you, darlin’.” Harley paused, as if measuring his words. “You’ve gotta be a genius for Tony to love you so much. And, I mean, the press has been all over you for months now.” Peter _really_ tried not to blush at that. “Pretty much the whole world knows what a genius you are now.”

“Yeah. Kinda wish they’d go away most of the time.”

Harley seemed to sense Peter’s discomfort on the topic. “Yeah, I bet that was a rough time.”

Peter smiled as he glanced at Harley out of the corner of his eye. If he didn’t know better, he’d say the other boy froze at the look. “Yeah, it was. Still is. Come on. I’m gonna show you the higher level labs first.”

He led him to Lab 7712A’s door, which was covered in hazard warnings. The walls of the lab were almost entirely glass, so the interns and chemists inside saw them coming. Peter scanned his black badge at the door and F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke up. “Access granted. Welcome back, Peter. Would you like to authorize guest for entry?” 

“Yeah. Give him level one access for now.” At Harley’s questioning look, Peter explained. “Mr. Stark probably hasn’t put you in the system yet, but you’ll be in soon enough. For now, you’ll need me to access pretty much everything.” 

He let Harley in. For the most part, the interns ignored him and kept their eyes focused on their projects. Sandy looked over at Peter as soon as he walked in. Her hair was tied in its usual ponytail, plastic goggles pushed up on her forehead, white lab coat swishing around her ankles as she worked. 

“Peter! Glad you dropped by! Who’s this?” Harley had begun scanning the bubbling beakers and Bunsen burners around the room as soon as he’d walked in. He had a look of distaste on his face — not unlike Ned in chemistry class. 

“This is Harley. Harley, this is Sandy, she’s in charge of this chem lab, which, if I do say so myself, is the most sophisticated chem lab. Harley’s spending the summer here. He’s, um…” Peter paused, unsure of how to introduce him. 

Luckily, Sandy had recognized his name. “You’re the guy who Tony Stark tweets back at, aren’t you? ‘At Tony Stark Broke Into My Garage’? I’d like to know the story behind that.”

Harley laughed. “That’s me. Every word is true, but I’ll spare ya the long story.”

“Where’re you from?”

Harley’s smile grew tight. “Ah, you picked up the accent. Yeah, I’m from Tennessee.”

Sandy chuckled. “Don’t worry. A few months in New York and you’ll drop the accent. I’m from Louisiana myself, and you can’t hear it on me. Anyway, I’m assuming Peter’s in charge of giving you a tour?” The both of them nodded. “Well, feel free to look around, but I wouldn’t touch anything. Like Peter said, this is the best chem lab. But it’s almost only college interns who work here. And Peter, when he feels alive enough to drop by and say hello.”

Harley moved away and started looking through the various test tubes, all holding liquids (or in some cases, sludges). Once his back turned, Sandy looked to Peter with eyebrows raised. Peter rolled his eyes, well aware Sandy knew he was ‘with’ Spider-Man.

“How’s the polymer fabrication going? Still trying to find a way to increase tensile strength?” she asked, watching Harley carefully as he poked around the chemical experiments.

Peter sighed. “Yeah.” He’d found himself ranting to Sandy when he came down to the testing room in this chem lab to experiment with his newest web fluid and it didn’t go how he wanted. “Nothing so far has been working, but I still have hope that I’ll find the right combination. Is Henry here today?”

“No, he’s off this week. Should be back next Monday. Did you want to ask him about some other options?” 

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ll talk to him when he gets back. Spidey’s getting impatient, but it’s not like he has no webs.”

Sandy laughed slightly at the remark. “Yeah, well, you should drop by more often anyway. I know the media’s been… pretty crazy lately, so just take care of yourself. I mean it.” Peter huffed fondly. “So, is Harley going to join us this summer in the labs?” She dropped her voice a bit, so Harley couldn’t hear from where he had picked up a conversation with another intern. Thanks to his enhanced hearing, Peter could hear her excitedly and elaborately explaining her work. Harley looked only mildly interested. 

“No, I don’t think he’s even interested in chemistry. I’m guessing he’s going to be working on some mech-e projects with Mr. Stark.”

She tugged him over to her work station, where everything was organized neatly, down to the paperclips in their cup. “Huh. Kid must know Stark as well as you do.”

“Probably better. He met Tony when he was eleven.”

“What, out in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee?”

Peter hesitated. He probably shouldn’t share anything about the Mandarin or the Iron Man suit. “Yeah, who knows.” He ignored Sandy’s narrowed eyes. "Anyway, I’ll drag him down here if you want to see him.”

“I don’t think I’ll _have_ to, Peter. If you’re down here, that kid’s gonna follow you.”

Peter scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Now quit pestering me.”

Sandy crossed her arms as she plopped down in her chair. “Fine. But I’m watching. And get your ass down here more often.” 

Peter smiled, sensing Harley approaching behind him. “Will do.”

“What’s next, Parker?”

“Well, there’s a lot more in the R&D department, and then several floors past that there’s a ton of offices and business workers.”

“Yeah, let’s avoid that.”

They left the lab, still talking, and Peter ignored the shit-eating grin on Sandy’s face as they got into the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ehhh this chapter was getting REALLY long so I cut a lot out but don't worry we'll get the gang in for ch 2
> 
> Also, BIG kudos to you if you know where I pulled the title from ;)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GodDAMN y’all love Troye Sivan. Yep, he's the inspo for the title (if you haven't heard Youth, go listen to it right now!) Anyways. Thank you for all the support and sorry I disappeared for a month lol I’m back!
> 
> Also y’all better be reading Harley with a Southern accent in your head

**_May 29, 2017_ **

Beter @peterwithab

THERE’S A BEE???

654 tweets 223 following 10M followers

Spider-Man ✓ @SpiderManOfficial

Just your friendly neighborhood Avenger. :)

Located in Queens, NY

112 tweets 112 following 16M followers

It had been Harley’s idea, to his credit. “C’mon, you gotta let me show the millions of Harley fans that we finally met!”

To which Peter had responded, “Sorry, the _millions?”_

“Oh c’mon Peter darlin’, as if you don’t stalk my Twitter on the daily.”

“I… don’t?”

As a matter of fact, Harley _had_ accumulated quite a following ever since Tony had tweeted him back the first time, and then apparently had skyrocketed even more when both Spider-Man himself and Peter tweeted him back too. (Peter’s accounts, both for himself and Spidey, had… unfortunately grown _a lot,_ especially after the verification _.)_

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

Jus yr small town country boy [yeehaw emoji]

3K tweets 443 following 738K followers

Peter’s eyes bugged out when he saw Harley’s account. “Three THOUSAND TWEETS???”

Harley shrugged and grinned at him. “Gotta keep busy in small town Tennessee somehow, right?” 

“Did you even have the bandwidth to send this many tweets?”

“Hey! It may be the country, but it ain’t like we don’t have phone towers! Now will you let me do this?”

Peter rolled his eyes and scrunched up his face, putting up a peace sign with his fingers as Harley snapped a selfie to post to Twitter indicating that they had, indeed, met.

“A peace sign, really? The chaotic bi energy popped out.”

Peter let out an exasperated sigh. “ _Christ._ Why did we think this was a good idea?”

“Because it _was_ , Parker.” Harley bumped him with his shoulder. “Don’t say you’re not enjoying this.”

Peter rolled his eyes again, but he was smiling.

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

guess who’s finally in NYC?! ;P [harleynpeter.jpg] @peterwithab

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

Now I can FiNaLLy meet @SpiderManOfficial

Harley shut off his phone and slipped it into his pocket as they headed to the elevators. “Now to let it _simmer.”_

Peter snorted. “You’re going to get back on to three million new followers and like, four hundred thousand replies.”

“Yeah, probably. So, what’s next? Or can we meet MJ and Ned?”

“Tomorrow, I think. MJ had a summer workshop today. But you still haven’t seen my lab. If you want to, I can show it to you.” Harley was a little sad to head back up in the private elevator, but he was dying to see Peter’s lab and all the tech he worked on for Spider-Man. And maybe Tony’s. He’d be here for the rest of the summer; he could see the rest of Stark Tower as soon as Tony gave him one of those badges. 

“Oh, please do.”

\---

As they got into the elevator, Harley couldn’t help but let his gaze slide back over to the other boy beside him. Peter’s excitement in all the labs, along with how easily he got along with all the other interns, was adorable. It had been hard to keep his eyes off of Peter while they toured R&D and the lower labs. Not thinking about it, he let his eyes wander. Peter had pushed his sleeves up somewhere along the way, and Harley knew he wasn’t hallucinating the cords of muscle he could see running up his arms. Maybe those abs had been real. His hair was slicked back, but not enough to hide the curls. And Peter was shorter than him, just enough that if he leaned against Harley, he could nestle his face into the hollow of Harley’s neck and —

Peter raised his eyes and caught him looking before Harley could move his eyes away. _Fuck, why are you like this, Keener._

Trying to salvage the situation, Harley cleared his throat. “Thanks, um, for showing me around today.”

“No problem.” Peter’s tone was clipped. Harley wondered if he’d crossed a line. He kept his eyes on his tattered shoes until the elevator dinged open. “This is my lab. Um, Mr. Stark made it specifically for me, so —”

He was cut short by F.R.I.D.A.Y., who spoke from somewhere in the ceiling as Harley walked in, looking around the space in wonder. “Guest not authorized.”

Peter didn’t even hesitate. “Override.” He reached a hand up to awkwardly rub his neck. “You can look around if you want.”

Harley briefly remembered coming home to his garage being full of new gadgets and what he could only guess was very expensive tech. Tony Stark was much more generous than everyone thought. Peter’s lab was only further proof of it. The lab was bigger than his garage at home, and yet every worktable and possible surface was still covered in blueprints, sheets of paper, metal scraps, work tools, and technology. It was clearly very well-used.

Harley poked around a table covered in small metallic gauntlets. “These the webshooters?”

“Yeah.” Peter joined him, bumping shoulders with him. Harley tried to ignore the electricity that started to pump through his veins at the touch. _Dammit. Control yourself, Keener. You’ve known him for literally a few hours._

“Do you only work on Spider-Man’s stuff? What about the other Avengers?”

“I don’t really work on their tech, no. Sometimes Mr. Stark will ask me to help him out with the design for one of their weapons, but I’m kind of the unofficial Spider-Man techie.” Peter half-smiled. 

“That’s so cool! How many webshooters have you made? Is this all of them?” He reached out and picked up one of the gauntlets, a thicker one that was all black. 

“No, there’s more of them. That’s a really old one.” Peter watched carefully, leaning on the table and crossing his arms. 

Harley _definitely_ ignored how the motion made the muscles in Peter’s arm stand out more.

_Christ, Harley. Get yourself under control! You’re acting like a horny teenager._

A very small part of his mind bit back, _I_ am _a horny teenager._

He focused on the various buttons on the gauntlet. Extending from the tapered side was a thick band with a circle at the end. Harley looked closer, pressing the circle.

“I wouldn’t do that—!” Peter yelled, but it was too late. The gauntlet shot a web directly at Harley’s face, hitting his nose and covering both it and his mouth. 

Which was fine — he’d just gotten hit in the face with Spider-Man’s webs — until Harley realized that the thick web made it near impossible to breathe. His nose was almost completely plugged and his mouth was sealed shut with the sticky substance. Harley reached both his hands up and clawed at the webbing to no avail. 

“Harley! Are you okay?”

Harley couldn’t respond, trying to scream through the webbing. Which was a stupid idea, because he hadn’t thought of the fact that screaming would just push all the air he had out of his lungs. 

Peter flailed wildly at his face, trying to figure out what was wrong. “Oh, god, you can’t breathe! Hold on!” Harley fell to the floor, still desperately clawing at the webbing. He watched as Peter launched himself over two worktables, landing fifteen feet away, rustled around in a toolbox and then jumped back over the tables to land in front of Harley. Harley was a bit preoccupied with not being able to breathe to notice that what Peter had done should be impossible.

“Okay, okay, hold still! Hold still, Harley!” Harley kept digging his fingernails into the web, but it wasn’t tearing in the slightest. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take his hands off of the web either — they were utterly stuck to it. Peter lunged for his hands, forcing them to still with unnatural strength, and with his other hand drew a knife to Harley’s face. 

Harley froze at the sight of the knife, almost going cross-eyed trying to follow it as Peter cut open a slit in the webbing, precisely under his nostrils. Harley gasped in a breath of cool air, chest heaving. 

The elevator opened, and suddenly Tony was there. “What’s going on?” he cried worriedly. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. said someone was suffocating?”

Peter carefully dug his fingers under the slit he’d made, widening it so Harley could breathe better. His fingers just barely grazed the underside of his nose and his lips as he tugged the webbing, and Harley froze again at the touch, still breathing heavily. All too soon, Peter’s hands were gone. He let go of Harley’s hands, which he still had pinned. _Ouch._ Harley couldn’t see his hands — they were still stuck to his face — but he was pretty sure there were bruises forming on his wrists. 

Speaking of which, why hadn’t Peter’s hands stuck to the webbing? His were still attached. 

He was taken away from his thoughts as Peter leaned back. Harley hadn’t noticed just how close Peter’s face had gotten — _big brown eyes, like Bambi_ — and suddenly wished he hadn’t moved away. “Harley accidentally shot himself in the face with webbing.”

Tony heaved a sigh of relief. “Christ, kid, you nearly gave me a heart attack. It’s only been a few hours since you got here. Don’t do that again.”

Harley rolled his eyes, trying to tug his hands off of the sticky material. He tried to say, “get it off,” but instead it came out as a muffled mumble through the web. 

“Oh, sorry, let me help you with that. I’ll get the web solvent.” Peter rushed away and Tony kneeled down next to him.

“You okay, kid?” Harley nodded. “Good. Maybe don’t mess around with the webshooters anymore? Or at least don’t point them at yourself.” Harley tried his best to give him a ‘really?’ look, but it seemed to fail spectacularly, because Tony started laughing. He clapped his hand on Harley’s shoulder. “Okay, kid. Pete, you two are free to work in here if you want, or go out. I don’t care. Just be back by dinnertime.”

Peter’s voice rang out from somewhere in the lab. “Okay, Mr. Stark! Thanks!”

Tony sat with Harley until Peter came back. “Alright, I’ll leave you two to it. Just try not to kill each other, okay?”

Harley dropped his head and groaned, and Tony laughed as he walked back to the elevator. 

Peter dropped to his knees, a bottle in hand and a washcloth in the other. “Sorry about this. I should’ve warned you,” he said as he opened the bottle and wet the washcloth with the solvent. “The webbing is specifically designed so you can’t cut through it. The only thing that’ll cut it is vibranium. That’s what that knife is. But the solvent should dissolve it in about ten minutes. You can breathe, right?”

Harley just nodded as Peter lifted the cloth to his face and started gently rubbing it over the webbing. His fingers were so tender against Harley’s face that he almost wanted to lean into Peter’s hand. 

Instead, he watched Peter’s face, how he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth just slightly, how his brow furrowed as he concentrated. Harley was utterly enraptured by Peter’s warm brown eyes, staring at them. Peter looked at the webbing, finally deeming it appropriately covered in solvent, and then his eyes finally met Harley’s gaze. 

Was he leaning in? God, they were so close… faces mere inches apart…

And suddenly, Peter was clearing his throat, moving away. “The stickiness should go away soon. Give it just a few minutes.” The brown-haired boy turned his back to Harley as he stood up, going to put the bottle and cloth away. 

And Harley sat on the floor, still feeling the ghost of Peter’s fingers on his face, wondering what the _hell_ had just happened. 

\---

They spent the rest of the afternoon messing around in Peter’s new lab. Peter had already decided he had to talk to MJ and Ned as soon as he got home tonight — how else was he supposed to deal with the stupid feelings and thoughts that crawled into his brain every time he looked at Harley? Sure, Peter knew Harley was gay — or bi, either way — but first of all, Harley _thought_ Peter was dating Spider-Man. And second of all, just cuz he was into guys didn’t automatically mean he was into Peter.

 _Ah, fuck._ Hopefully Harley hadn’t noticed how weird he was being.

Thankfully, Harley had been preoccupied with looking through a lot of the Spider-Man blueprints. Peter had hesitated to let him see initially, but seeing as to how Harley knew exactly how the Iron Man suit worked, and how Tony trusted him, he didn’t see any problem with it. The mechanics, rather than the chemistry behind the web fluid, was what Harley was mostly interested in. 

Now, Peter sat back in his chair, keeping an eye on Harley as he ran a careful finger over one of the older webshooters (after the incident a few hours ago, he was making sure Harley didn’t accidentally shoot himself in the face again). He took out his phone, bored. 

“Oh, _shit._ Harls?”

Harley laughed. “Did you just call me _Harls?”_

“Meh, easier to say than Harley,” Peter responded quickly, hoping his face didn’t turn red. 

“Is it?”

Peter switched the subject. “You checked Twitter lately?”

“Uh, no,” Harley said, quirking an eyebrow as he set down the webshooter and picked up another, one with gears and springs poking out of it. “Lemme guess, though. I have a million new followers?”

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

Jus yr small town country boy [yeehaw emoji]

3K tweets 443 following 1.3M followers

“Close enough _._ ”

“ _What?!_ Really? _”_

“Yeah. 1.3 million followers, man.” Peter scrolled to find the tweet Harley had sent out a few hours ago, with the picture of the two of them together. “Ohhh, man. Wanna hear some replies to your welcome-to-New-York tweet?”

Harley wiped his brow with his arms, oil and grease lining his hands. Peter was too focused on trying to ignore how _hot_ he looked, even that messy, to realize he literally looked like a mini-Tony. “Shoot.”

“Mm, let’s see. Oh, Christopher @2much2do wants to know why you’re in New York. Actually, a shit ton of people do. Amanda and about four hundred other people want to know if we’re brothers —” _blegh, WHY “—_ I think there’s around seventy people begging for a storytime explaining your Twitter handle, and —”

He stopped abruptly. 

“What? What is it?”

Peter slapped his forehead. 

Harley put a hand on his hip. “Are you gonna tell me, Peter, or am I gonna have to get grease all over my phone myself?"

“Uh, I think half the world thinks you’re Spider-Man.”

Harley burst out laughing, surprising Peter. “Oh, _good._ This’ll be fun.”

“How can they even think that? You’re not even from New York? What is going on?”

“People like to jump to conclusions, I guess. Maybe they think the two of us look good together as a couple.” Harley playfully shot him a wink from across the room, heading over to Peter. “But I guess as soon as I meet Spidey then we can prove ‘em all wrong, huh?”

Peter swallowed a heavy knot in his throat. He was going to have to tell Harley, sooner or later. “Yeah, about that, Harley —” 

Harley ignored him, walking over to the sink and washing off his arms. “You can only hold out on me for so long, Peter darlin’. I came to New York for him too.”

Peter frowned. He knew Harley was joking, and yet —

“Anyway, he doesn’t have to take off the mask, I’m fine meeting him in the suit, that’s enough, although hopefully you’ll lemme see him without it one day —”

The words poured out of Peter’s mouth before he could think through them, as if of their own volition. “We’re — Harley, we're not — I'm —"

But before he could push out the truth — _I am Spider-Man —_ he was interrupted.

Harley’s eyes widened. "Oh, god. Did y'all break up?” 

Peter wanted to hit himself over the head. He didn't respond, only looking down at his shoes. That, apparently, was enough of an answer for Harley, who quieted and looked at him. Peter’s sensitive ears easily picked up Harley’s heart racing all of the sudden. _(Odd.)_ He fumbled over his next words, aware he couldn’t take it back now. “Not... not exactly, we're going through a rough patch. I’m sorry, Harley, he’s... he's not coming around much when I’m here, so I don’t think you’ll meet him anytime soon.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, Peter. No wonder you were all quiet about him whenever I brought him up. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

 _Fuck, look at what you’ve done now._ Peter slapped himself internally. “It’s okay, don’t — don’t worry about it. I-I’m fine.” He looked anywhere but at Harley’s blue eyes.

A silence settled over them, the only sound left being the water running out of the sink (and Harley’s heart, slowly but surely slowing down). The longer the silence went on, the harder it became for Peter to say anything. Finally, though, he brought his eyes back up to Harley’s. “We’re just — yeah. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew how excited you were to meet him.”

Harley gave him a soft smile, and Peter’s heart all but melted. “It’s okay, I shouldn’t have been so pushy and intrusive.” He cleared his throat and made his way to where Peter sat, plopping himself down on the floor and reaching for a few scraps of metal. “So, tell me, what else is new on Twitter? Am I trending?”

Peter smiled to himself as he checked. “Not yet, but just a few more #harleykeener hashtags and I think you’ll get there.”

“Fantastic. Trending on Twitter is on my bucket list.”

\---

Peter left the Tower that evening, before dinner, promising to introduce Harley to Ned, MJ and his aunt tomorrow. He was spending tonight in Queens. 

Harley hoped with all his might that Peter hadn’t been able to hear how fast his heart had been racing the whole time. It felt as though it was going to explode out of his chest and break a rib or two along the way. He’d been internally kicking himself the rest of the afternoon after Peter told him that he and Spidey were having a rough time with their relationship.

_I never should have prodded, ugh. I must seem so pushy._

Despite that, though, it seemed Peter forgot about it for the rest of the afternoon. Tony had interrupted them several hours afterwards, while they were in a particularly heated argument about which one was better: _Star Wars_ or _Star Trek_ . ( _Star Trek_ was superior, obviously. Harley would make Peter see that eventually.)

After dinner, Harley cornered Tony. “Tony, how could you not tell me?”

The Mechanic looked bewildered. “Tell you what?”

“How _hot_ Peter Parker is,” Harley whined.

Tony laughed and cringed at the same time. It was an odd sight. “Oh, gross. I don’t wanna hear about it, kid.” Harley shot him a glare. “But I’m frankly shocked you haven’t seen any pictures of Peter. You two were pen pals for like, what, three months? Were you living under a rock in Tennessee?”

“Yeah, I knew what he looked like, I’ve seen pictures, but it’s different meeting him in person. Anyway, it’s hopeless with Spider-Man in the picture. And I don’t want to interfere with… whatever’s going on with that right now.”

Tony positively _cackled._ “No, you don’t.”

Harley paused for a moment before absentmindedly asking, “ _How_ is he so _ripped_?”

Tony fake gagged. “I forgot what teenage hormones were like. Stay away from me until you’re less horny.”

“As if you were never a teenager.”

“Ah, those were the days.”

“Those were _not_ the days, Stark. You were in college at fifteen.”

“Sure was. What was gonna stop me from getting down with some college girls?”

“Never say that again. That’s _illegal,_ y’know, _statutory rape._ I think I might vomit.”

“Aren’t you from the South? Land of incest or something, as your memes say?”

“That’s ALABAMA!!! We don’t talk about them!”

\---

_Group chat: brainless idiots + MJ_

8:18 PM

_peter-man:_ MAYDAY MAYDAY WERE SINKING

 _peter-man:_ (i was gonna text to the gc w/ shuri but she told me shes dying today bc theres some fAnCy shit goin on in Wakanda)

 _MJ:_ What? Why? I leave you alone for ONE DAY-

 _guy in the chair:_ THIS IS THE COAST GUARD WHY ARE YOU SINKING

 _peter-man:_ harley keener may be hotter than expected

 _MJ:_ So? Do something about it? Ask him out? Tell him you like him? This is not hard, Peter.

 _guy in the chair:_ oooh TEA. SPILL it 

_peter-man:_ well. I felt a cOnNeCTiOn 

_MJ:_ Like I said. Do something about it.

 _peter-man:_ i may have told him that spidey and i are goin thru a rough patch

 _guy in the chair:_ youre telling me harley hasnt figured it out yet

 _MJ:_ I swear to fucking god.

 _MJ:_ Peter, you ARE aware that ALL of your pain is self-inflicted, right?

 _peter-man:_ ouch uwu. No need to come at my feelings like that

 _MJ:_ I state only facts.

 _guy in the chair:_ no, no, she’s got a point

 _peter-man:_ what do I do

 _MJ:_ Die, I guess. Is that what you wanted to hear?

 _peter-man:_ yep thanks

 _guy in the chair:_ im still baffled you chose not to tell him for no reason? Why?

 _peter-man:_ i thought it was a good idea but alas i am boo boo the fool

 _MJ:_ Indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if you live in Alabama lol I didn't mean it :P Peter do be digging himself into a hole huh 
> 
> I'll be back soon :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley gets a tour of New York City, Peter's goddamn spidey sense acts up again, and the two of them reach a mutual understanding that Episode IV: A New Hope is pretty good.

**_May 30, 2017_ **

Harley Keener had decided two things. 

First: he was going to somehow get rid of these stupid teenage hormonal feelings and continue to build on the solid friendship he and Peter had started over Twitter. He didn’t want to compromise this friendship, especially since he was supposed to be here for the rest of the summer and it’d get really awkward if he made a move and Peter didn’t take it well. 

On top of that, Peter was going through a rough patch in his relationship with Spider-Man, and the last thing Harley was going to do was try and get romantically involved with Peter (not that he had planned to in the first place anyway, but that was before he met Peter in person. Now he knew it was going to take a lot more than willpower to ignore his feelings). And if they broke up? Well, Harley would be a supportive friend to help him through it. That’s all. 

(Of course, this didn’t mean Harley was going to tone down the playful flirting. He did have a reputation to maintain, after all.)

And second: Michelle Jones terrified him. 

She seemed friendly enough, if friendly was even a word you could associate with her, towards Peter and Ned. She may have been snarky and tone-dead ninety-nine percent of the time, but Harley could tell right off the bat she cared a lot about both of them. He got the feeling that if he wronged either of them, Michelle Jones would probably murder him while he slept. 

(There. Another reason not to make a move on Peter. Michelle would chop him up like Gordon Ramsay julienne’d his vegetables.)

Peter had come by the tower to get him this morning, and brought MJ and Ned in tow this time as he’d said he would. He’d warned not to be put off by MJ over text, so Harley had the intention of putting his best foot forward. He’d met them down in the lobby, trying his best to ignore the flash of cameras directed their way. If he wanted to hang out with world-teenage-heartthrob and flash-famous Peter Parker, he guessed he’d have to suck it up and deal with it. 

Peter still threw him an apologetic look. “Sorry about that. Mr. Stark tried literally everything, but he can’t throw them off.”

Michelle had interrupted him. “Yep, it’s a sad side effect of your existence, Peter, we know.” And then she’d turned to Harley. “I’m MJ. You can call me Michelle.” She’d said the whole thing with a monotone voice, like she’d already bored of Harley, and yet her eyes said differently. Harley felt like she was literally looking straight into his soul. 

“Uh, ok. Nice to meet you, Michelle.” He averted his eyes and caught Peter’s. Peter rolled his eyes as if to say, _yeah, she’s like this all the time._ Harley then turned to Ned, who he was glad to see was smiling at him. “And you’re Ned, right? I’ve heard a lot about you guys!”

Ned had shaken his hand and opened his mouth, but Michelle beat him to it again. “Not as much as we’ve heard about you from Peter, I’d wager.”

Harley didn’t know if it was a trick of the light or if Peter’s ears had actually reddened. 

Yep. Michelle Jones was a force to be reckoned with and feared.

“So, we’re giving you a tour of New York City, then?” Ned had asked. “There’s a _lot_ to see.” He’d launched into a long-winded introduction of the different boroughs. They’d walked out the door of Stark Tower (the reporters trailing them at a ‘respectful’ distance) and had been walking basically all day — through Central Park, past museums and shops and apartments and business buildings, past a seemingly endless barrage of yellow cabs and buses and people on the streets and sidewalks. They took the subway just once, and after declaring it nauseatingly full of people and _hot_ as all fucking hell, decided they’d stick to buses and walking.

Harley was overwhelmed. This was the first time he’d been in a city, and it was far larger than he’d thought it would be. For some reason, growing up in the middle of nowhere in countryside Tennessee had given him the impression that cities were just small clumps of skyscrapers with smaller houses around them. He’d been very wrong. 

New York City was _enormous_ , and much more humid than he thought it’d be (though not more humid than Tennessee, so he was used to it), and very hot. The buildings towered above him, blocking out most of the sky. There was trash littered everywhere. It smelled like car exhaust and greasy food and, well, people. The people were dodgy and not to be trusted. Harley had thought pickpockets weren’t really a thing. He was wrong. Peter told him to move his phone to a less conspicuous pocket unless he wanted it stolen by the end of the day.

And the noise. God, it was never quiet here. Tires screeching, horns honking, people talking and shouting and a million other noises filled his ears. How anyone lived here was a mystery to him. 

He loved every second of it, though. There were a million things to see, to do, to experience. Back in Tennessee, all there was in Rose Hill were miles of fields and cows. And the occasional bar. The most exciting thing to see there was a horse once in a while. 

By midday, Harley had no clue where they were or even what borough they were in. All four of them decided to stop for food, and Ned was pretty insistent that Harley try the best of New York’s food: pizza. This place was more of a street vendor than anything, so Harley’s expectations weren’t really high. 

The pizza slice the guy handed him was _huge._ Harley turned to Peter. “This is _one_ pizza slice?” 

Peter just laughed. “Wait til you try it. You’ll be glad there’s a lot of pizza in one slice.”

He was right. Harley had to admit it was the best pizza he’d eaten in his whole life. He couldn’t just go back to eating regular pizza after this. “Mm. Finger-lickin’ good, if you ask me. I can’t believe I’ve been settling for regular pizza my whole life. Never again.”

Ned grinned, halfway through his own pepperoni slice. “See! I told you.” 

And so Harley found himself on the Staten Island Ferry that afternoon, being sketched by MJ — whose dark curly hair fell in her face as she drew him (Harley didn’t know if her drawing him meant that she was warming up to him or if he should be afraid she’d turn the sketch into the police later) — while Ned told him stories of Midtown High School. Peter had been the one who had suggested going to Staten Island, but had become somewhat withdrawn and jumpy as soon as they’d boarded the ferry, eyes darting back and forth as if there was imminent danger. 

Michelle was the one who stopped him. “Peter, the ferry’s not gonna blow up. That was a one time thing.”

“Wait. The ferry blew up? I want to hear about this!” Harley exclaimed. Peter, still on edge for some reason, began recounting the story, only for Ned to take over excitedly. Apparently, Spider-Man — who Harley admired more and more as Ned went on, even though he knew somewhere in him that the conversation about the superhero was probably negatively affecting Peter — had tried to web together the ferry, which had been totally sliced in half hot-dog style, but the webs had snapped and Iron Man had shown up to patch it back together. 

“Classic Tony, swooping in to save the day.” Harley glanced at Peter, relieved to find that he was smiling and hadn’t focused on the Spider-Man part of the story. “What cut the ferry in half?”

“Alien weaponry,” Ned said without hesitation, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“ _Alien_ — _”_ Harley paused, recalling how he’d watched the alien attack on New York as a kid on TV. “Yeah, okay. I guess that’s something I should get used to, huh?”

“Honestly, I’m more surprised you hadn’t heard of this,” Michelle deadpanned without looking up from her sketch. “It was all over the news.”

“He’s from Tennessee. Cut him some slack, not everyone knows everything that happens in New York,” said Peter, leaning over the railing to watch the current below. 

“Ah, yes. Country boy,” MJ said, smirking at him. 

The ride to Staten Island passed, thankfully, without any ferry exploding. They spent half the day exploring the island before heading back to Manhattan. By the time they boarded the ferry again, the sun had crossed the sky and was starting to head towards the horizon. 

Peter listened as Harley ended up telling Ned and MJ about how Tony had broken into his garage all those years ago and left him with the suit. He’d kept visiting Harley throughout the years, but this was the first time he’d been invited to New York.

Ned wasn’t able to pick his jaw up off the floor the whole time. “So he left you, an eleven year old kid, in charge of _recharging the Iron Man suit?”_

Harley smiled. “Yep. Mark 42.”

Peter watched their interaction with a light in his eyes. Every time Harley caught his eye, he would look away, his ears pink. Harley cringed internally as he thought about how he’d leaned in just a bit too close yesterday, when Peter was getting the Spider-Man webs off his face. Peter had probably felt super uncomfortable about it. He left it alone. _Don’t make him uncomfortable, Keener. Jesus. It shouldn’t be this fucking hard to get over a stupid crush._

\---

After showing Harley around Times Square (he’d said that the screens were much larger than he’d envisioned and it was kind of overwhelming), Peter decided they’d seen a good enough portion of Manhattan. The four of them headed back to the Tower, dropping MJ and Ned off on the way. Ned promised to start a group chat with the four of them before he opened the front door to his apartment building and walked in.

And then, it was just Harley and him, walking back past Central Park just as the sun began to set on all the buildings around them.

Peter figured he’d been quieter than usual most of the day, letting Ned take over most of the touristy talk. As per usual, MJ had been the only one to notice and kept it to herself save the frequent eyebrow-raised looks at Peter throughout the day when Harley wasn’t looking. _C’mon. Tell him. I will if you don’t,_ she’d texted him while Harley bought his first slice of New York pizza.

_You wouldn’t dare._

To which MJ had rolled her eyes.

But Peter had enjoyed just watching Harley take in New York City. He’d been smiling the whole day, and as a result Peter’s heart had been fluttering all day like a butterfly that couldn’t escape. He knew Harley had been trying to catch his eye for more than a few seconds all day, but he hadn’t been able to hold eye contact. Especially when today was one of _those_ days when his senses were at twelve rather than eleven, and New York City’s loudness hurt as it echoed in his ears, and every time he looked at Harley’s eyes he could see the tiny flecks of gold where the sun was caught in the blue, and —

He’d thankfully brought his special filtering earbuds, but without the glasses as well — well, it was pretty bad. 

Peter could hear Harley’s heartbeat, a steady rhythm that went _ba-dum, ba-dum_ , and sped up just slightly every time their eyes met. It was the only thing keeping him from melting under the enormous sensory overload threatening to take him down the whole day. MJ’s and Ned’s heartbeats were there too, but fainter. It was like Harley’s heart was suddenly his own, roaring in his ears and thrumming through his skull. 

_Does Harley like me?_ The thought had repeated over and over again in his head all day. 

Thankfully, Ned’s excitement about Harley and his connection to Tony Stark and Iron Man kept him occupied, and Peter watched from the sidelines as the two got along. He would have said something, participated more, but Peter knew if he said too much he really _would_ pass out from the reverberations of his own voice in his head.

“Are you going back to your aunt’s tonight?” Harley asked him, breaking Peter out of his train of thought. Peter turned to look at him — Harley’s eyes were watching the green treetops of Central Park as they walked. 

(That was something else Peter had noticed. Harley’s eyes were always looking up. Maybe it was because he’d never been surrounded by so many tall buildings before.)

“No,” Peter responded. “I’m staying at the Tower tonight.” He flinched, hating how the sound of his voice echoed in his own head. Harley didn’t say anything if he’d noticed.

“So. How much of New York would you say I saw today?”

Peter smiled despite his growing headache. “Eh, maybe a tenth of it? If we’d taken more subways, we definitely would have been able to show you more. Honestly, though, I’m glad we didn’t take more subways. Don’t think I could’ve taken that today.”

Harley tilted his head, giving him a slightly confused look. “What d’you mean?”

And there was the slight southern twang. Peter couldn’t help but smile to himself every time he heard it. It was oddly charming.

“Uh, well, I’ve been kinda oversensitive today — my senses, I mean — it happens every once in a while.”

“You mean like sensory overload?”

“Yeah, yeah, exactly.” Peter blinked repeatedly, trying to get the black spots out of his eyes. They receded after a few tries, and Peter focused on the sound of Harley’s heart to stabilize himself again.

“God, I’m sorry. Y’know, we could’ve postponed this if you weren’t feelin’ okay today.”

“I’m — I’m honestly surprised you knew —”

“About sensory overload?” Harley gave him a half-smile. “Yeah, well. Tony wasn’t doing too well when he crash-landed in my garage. I thought he was dying when he had a panic attack the first time.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Peter didn’t ask further. He swayed and almost tripped over his own feet, nausea suddenly overtaking him. 

“Hey, are you okay? Peter?” Harley stopped on the sidewalk next to him and half-reached out to steady Peter before withdrawing his hand. Peter couldn’t tell if he’d realized that his touch could make it worse, but he was grateful for the lack of it. He already felt like the fibers in the fabric of his clothes were scratching microscopic grooves into his skin.

“Yeah. Just, uh, um, give me, gimme a sec.”

“Sure. Wanna sit down? I can call Tony.”

Peter didn’t respond, shaking his head minisculely to try and quiet the loudness of everything in his ears. _I will not pass out. I will not pass out. I am not gonna pass out in front of Harley Keener on day two of meeting him._

Peter listened closely and latched onto the sound of Harley’s heart once more. He closed his eyes and listened intently to its steady rhythm. It may have been several minutes or just a few seconds later, Peter couldn’t tell, but he opened his eyes again. Harley had somehow gotten both of them sitting down on a bench under one of Central Park’s trees and was watching him.

“Sorry.”

“Hey, you’re all good. You want to stand up or keep sitting? Or you want me to shut up?”

“I think — I think I’m better now.” He focused on the thrumming of Harley’s heart, and his head cleared a bit more. “We’re close to the Tower. Let’s go.” Peter pushed down the swell of shame that was welling up in his throat. _Day two, and you’re almost passing out in front of him._

_Stop it. Stop it._

“Okay, but maybe drink some water first.”

Peter did, and then the two of them stood again and walked on. Harley kept quiet.

“Sorry about that. You shouldn’t have to —” Peter didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know how to.

“Peter, don’t worry about it. Seriously. I get it.”

Peter couldn’t possibly see how Harley got it, but he continued past the topic. “Anyway. Do you want to meet Aunt May tomorrow? You can come by our apartment.”

“That sounds swell!” 

“Who even says _swell_?”

“Psssht. One day, Parker, I’m going to bring you down to Rose Hill and introduce you to the locale. One day. And you’ll be forced to realize that it’s _your_ language that’s whack-ass, not mine.”

“Sure thing, Harls.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

\---

The rest of the evening was spent in relative quiet, but it was a comfortable sort of quiet. Tony let the two of them order in, and since he and Pepper were having a date night elsewhere, the penthouse was relatively empty. Peter put on his glasses and adjusted his earbuds once they arrived, but he told Harley it was mostly unnecessary by then. Apparently, the walls of the penthouse were soundproof. Harley thought that was a bit overkill — this high up, Peter shouldn’t be able to hear the blaring of alarms and cars beeping and the general noise of New York City anyway. 

Harley plopped down on the couch. “Dear sweet Jesus, our Lord and savior. My _feet.”_

Peter laughed at him. “Yeah, the pain sets in as soon as you stop moving. What do you want to order in?”

Harley groaned. His feet _ached_ like they never had before. Was this how New York City’s people lived every day? Painful feet? “How am I supposed to know? You can’t even order anything in Rose Hill. What is there?”

“I can just get food from the place Mr. Stark usually orders from. It’s Chinese food, you good with that?”

“Sure thing.” Harley pushed his shoes off of his feet and lay back on the couch. “Man, I’m _starving.”_

“Me too. Walking all day will do that to you.”

“I was going to suggest we should work in the lab, but I think I’m too tired for that now. Might just pass out.”

“We’re gonna watch Star Wars. I swear, I will get you to realize it’s better than Star Trek.”

“Sure. Mmhmm. Yep. Star Trek is still going to be better.”

“You can’t say that if you haven’t watched Star Wars.”

“Oh, and you’ve seen them both?”

Peter gave him a gaping look. “Of course I have?” He phrased it like a question. “What kind of question is that?”

“Fine. We’ll watch Star Wars. But I’m telling you I won’t like it.”

“Sure you won’t. F.R.I.D.A.Y., can you play Star Wars?”

“Which episode?”

“Four, please. Harley here is going to get _educated_ today.”

They settled down in the living room after Peter called and ordered food, not even bothering to change or shower. “I’ll do it after the movie,” Harley said, fully aware he would not be showering until tomorrow morning.

Harley watched as Luke Skywalker (“Vader’s his father, right?”) (“God, Harley, you’re gonna spoil it for yourself.”) (“I’m not spoiling it, that’s just something everyone knows.”) (“Just shut up and watch the movie.”) met Obi-Wan Kenobi and Han Solo (“Aha! I knew he shot first!”) and tried to wield a lightsaber properly. They were just arriving at the Death Star when the food came in. 

“No offense, but Luke is _whiny_ as _hell_.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that. He gets better, though.”

“Is he a Jedi yet?”

Peter narrowed his eyes at him as he grabbed chopsticks and dug into his rice bowl. “Uh, no. That takes a while.”

After trying and failing several times to use chopsticks, Harley gave up and used a fork. The rest of the movie passed quickly, and was over all too soon. Harley was intensely aware throughout the whole movie that Peter was watching him. Whether it was to gauge his reaction to Luke Skywalker or for some other reason, he didn’t know. He didn’t turn to meet Peter’s eyes until the end.

“Chewie deserves a medal, goddamnit.”

“ _Thank_ you. That’s what I was saying. Okay. You’ve seen it now, what’s your rating?”

“Lacking good visual effects. Okay plot, I like the Force, R2D2 is probably my new favorite character, C3PO’s fucking annoying. Obi-Wan should’ve stayed alive longer. Luke is kind of a useless twink, but he and Leia have to get together by the end, please tell me they do.”

Peter visibly _cringed._

Harley frowned. “Ugh, don’t tell me she ends up with Han Solo. No. He’s pretty but he’s so full of himself.”

“Huh, sounds like someone I know.”

“Hey, now listen here —”

“You haven’t given me your rating!”

“Mmm, fine. I’ll give it a 7 out of 10.”  
  
“That’s harsh.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to give up on Star Trek that easily, now am I?” 

Peter smiled at him, and for a second Harley couldn’t look away from his eyes. Big and like warm chocolate. _Like Bambi._ Then Peter broke eye contact as he looked at his watch. “I think I’m gonna head to bed.”

“What time is it?” Harley pulled out his own phone. Half past midnight. “Huh. I thought Pepper and Tony would be back by now.”

“Well, knowing Mr. Stark…”

Harley laughed. “Yeah, I think I’ll head to bed too. Thanks for showing me New York.”

“I just showed you part of Manhattan. There’s a whole lot of New York City left.” Peter paused, as if contemplating his next words. “Thanks for not freaking out on me when I, you know, almost passed out.”

“Like I said, Peter, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

Peter got up and paused again. But then he shook his head, and all he said was, “Good night. See ya in the morning.” He padded off down the hall, taking off his glasses as he went. 

As soon as he was gone, Harley threw himself back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. The glow from the TV cast a blue light across the room. 

“Fuck it, I’m in too deep,” he sighed to himself. How in the hell he was going to keep ignoring the fact that he liked Peter, Harley had no clue. He pulled out his phone again, swiping through the messages Ned had sent in the new groupchat for the four of them before opening up Twitter.

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

Jus yr small town country boy [yeehaw emoji]

3K tweets 445 following 1.5M followers

He scrolled a bit before seeing the picture. It had probably been reposted from one of those stupid paparazzi news outlets like Daily Mail, but under something of a fan account. The picture was of him, Peter, Ned and MJ walking down the street somewhere in Manhattan today. Harley and Peter were laughing at something Ned had said. 

Peter Parker @ilovepeterparker

is it just me or does Harley keener seem the exact right height and build to be spiderman? And he gets along really well with peter… @SpiderManOfficial @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage @peterwithab [harleypetermjned.jpg] #spiderman #harleykeener #whoisspiderman #spidey #spideyparker

The tweet had only a few likes and retweets. Harley chuckled to himself. Unbelievable. People _still_ thought _he_ was Spider-Man. Were they even paying attention? He was from Tennessee. 

He closed the app. That was more than enough Twitter for today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who enjoy the Twitter/internet aspect of this story, fear not! I know the past few chapters haven't had much in terms of that but that'll change soon :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest In Power, Chadwick Boseman. You’ll be sorely missed.
> 
> Sorry for dropping off the face of the world for a hot sec there. Things got extremely busy (and to be totally fair, they’re still incredibly busy because school just started back up). It’s now somehow been a little over one year since I started writing this and I just want to say I’m so glad for all y’all. You brighten my day w/ your comments :)
> 
> Also, I know Tony's been weirdly absent the past few chapters. Don't worry, he'll be back soon, he's just got a lot going on... ;)

**_May 31, 2017_ **

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

Jus yr small town country boy [yeehaw emoji]

3K tweets 445 following 1.7M followers

Peter Parker @ilovepeterparker

is it just me or does Harley keener seem the exact right height and build to be spiderman? And he gets along really well with peter… @SpiderManOfficial @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage @peterwithab [harleypetermjned.jpg] #spiderman #harleykeener #whoisspiderman #spidey #spideyparker

Chris is that a Weed @imcallingthePollicee

@ilovepeterparker ok but… [eyes.emoji]

Dudebros Suck @destroyeroffratboys

@ilovepeterparker [pursedlips.meme]

Izzy @endless_diamond_sky_

@ilovepeterparker RIGHT? I think we figured out who @SpiderManOfficial is… #spideyparker #spidey #whoisspiderman

Peter Stark @StarkSon

@ilovepeterparker THIS IS STRAIGHT FACTS OMG #spiderman #spideyparker

Camilla @camillaofhousestark

@ilovepeterparker @SpiderManOfficial are you harley keener???

Trent @DontTrentMe11

Yo @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage are you #spiderman please say yes

Andrea @IfYouHadTheChanceToChangeYerFate

@ilovepeterparker @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage @SpiderManOfficial SAY SIKE RN

Man Of Steel @earths_mightiest_heroes666

@SpiderManOfficial we are DYING to know if you’re Harley or if he’s just stealing your mans #spideyparker #spidey

Abby Keener @abbykeenss

@tonystarkbrokeintomygarage HAHAHAHA THIS IS HILARIOUS

\---

“Hey, Harls?”

Harley honestly had no idea how Peter had so quickly attached himself to the nickname, but for some reason it made him feel warm and fuzzy. It was endearing, he guessed. Not that he’d ever say that.

He pushed his goggles up and turned off the soldering iron. Peter was on the other side of the lab, having discarded his work on some web fluid (it was green, and Peter said he’d been trying to get it clear for almost a month) and now on his phone. They’d decided to just work this morning in the lab for a little bit before going to Peter’s apartment to meet his aunt and meet up with MJ and Ned. Harley had stumbled into the kitchen at eight this morning only to find Pepper and Tony talking quietly. They’d pointed him to Peter’s lab, where he’d supposedly been since six. Harley had gotten to tinker with some old webshooters (carefully, of course) while Peter haphazardly mixed chemicals.

“Yeah, what’s up? And by the way, if you’re gonna keep calling me Harls, I’m gonna have to come up with a nickname for you too.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Twitter seems to have latched onto the idea that you’re Spidey.”

Harley pushed his goggles back down, sighing. “Yeah, I know.” He put his hand on his chin. “Hm. Petey? No, that won’t do.”

“Oh, boy. Please don’t ever call me that.”

“Petey- _pie._ ”

“ _No._ I would rather die. Also, you’re avoiding the Twitter thing.”

Harley shot Peter a look. “It’s not a thing. Who said it was a thing?”

Peter returned the look with an exasperated one of his own. “It’s a thing.”

“It doesn’t _have_ to be.” Peter raised his eyebrows, and Harley (ignoring the strange desire to stare into Peter’s eyes forever) groaned and set down the webshooter he’d been working on, pulling out his phone. “Fine. I was gonna send out a tweet anyway.”

“What’re you gonna say?”

“I dunno. Any suggestions, _Petey-pie_?” 

Peter scrunched up his face in disgust, ears reddening. (Harley had already decided that besides making Peter smile and laugh, he would try his darned best to make him blush. And boy, oh boy, ding ding ding! Success!)

“You’re the one with three thousand tweets.”

Harley pursed his lips and scratched the back of his head as he opened Twitter. “Hm, yeah, that nickname’s not gonna stick. But trust me, I’ll come up with something.”

 _Bambi_ , an intrusive voice in the very back of his head suddenly blurted. _Call him Bambi._

_What the fuck, Keener?_

_He’s got Bambi eyes._

_Shut the fuck up._

“Okay, uhhh… let’s see. How about, ‘I’m not Spider-Man’?”

“As if that’ll be enough.”

“‘I’m not Spider-Man… I’m afraid of heights and I’m from Tennessee, quit asking’?”

Peter looked up. “You’re afraid of heights?”

Harley scratched the back of his head again. “Um, yeah. We don’t have many high rises in Rose Hill.” He couldn’t quite understand the expression on Peter’s face at hearing that, but it looked almost like… disappointment? Harley tried to ignore it. “I bet ya aren’t, right? What with Spidey swinging you all over the city —”

Harley cut himself off. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

Peter waved him off. “Don’t worry about it.”

They were quiet for a second as Harley wrote and erased several tweets. “There, sent and done. Happy now? Can I get back to working on these old-ass webshooters?”

“I don’t know, can you?” Peter asked, grinning. He scrolled on his phone. “Who’s Abby?”

“Oh, you saw her tweet? That’s my delightful younger sister. Eleven years old and kind of a crackhead. She asked me to get your signature for her.” Harley dug in a nearby toolbox for the proper size drill bit.

Peter laughed. “By all means. She sounds like fun. Is she also a cowgirl?”

“I mean, she knows how to ride a horse, but no. She’s just a crackhead and I love her. Speaking of which, I need to ask Tony to buy her a new watch, again.”

“Your train of thought blows my mind. What?”

“Ever since Tony lost her limited edition Dora watch — long story, back during the Mandarin — he’s been buying her watches. Like, every year.” Harley shook his head fondly. “I’m starting to think Tony’s a bit of a crackhead.”

“And you’re telling me you’re _not?_ ”

“Shut it, Parker.”

\---

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

Y’all! I’m not Spider-Man!!! I’m afraid of heights and from, y’know… Tennessee so I don’t exactly fit the description lmfao

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

@SpiderManOfficial back me up here dude

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

also @abbykeenss shut up >:P

Peter Parker @ilovepeterparker

@SpiderManOfficial @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage sounds like something spider-man would say to keep his identity i dunno man… #harleykeener #whoisspiderman #spidey

Spider-Man ✓ @SpiderManOfficial

I can indeed confirm that I am not Harley Keener nor vice versa! Also, for privacy’s sake, please stop trying to find out who I am. I promise you’ll find out when I turn 18. :)

> _See 2,382 more replies_

\---

They’d settled into a comfortable silence working in the lab. Peter was watching carefully as Harley poked through some boxes, the webshooters left on the table (not that he’d admit it, but he was mostly watching just because he liked watching Harley). He spoke up after a while. “Hey, you met Ned and MJ. What about you? Any friends back home in Tennessee?”

His spidey sense instantly told him that had been the wrong thing to say.

Harley scoffed almost nonchalantly, blue eyes looking up from the box and avoidantly wandering around the lab. “Nah, not really. Not anymore, anyways.” 

Peter paused, not knowing whether he should pry or not. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked such a personal question. But right as he was about to change the subject, Harley spoke up again, still not meeting Peter’s eyes. “That’s just kind of part of being the openly bi kid in the middle of bumfuck Tennessee.”

“Sorry, I didn’t —”

“Nah, it’s okay. If it weren’t for Tony I’d still be getting beat up, but they all know I can beat their asses with my tech.”

Peter let out a half-hearted laugh. He’d clearly hit a nerve. God, he was stupid. 

Harley noticed his distress. “Don’t worry about me, Petey-pie. I know how to take care of myself.”

Peter knew there was more to it, more to this story, but he wasn’t about to ask. He’d already fucked up. Thankfully, Harley seemed to forget about it instantly. “What about these gadgets?” he asked, pointing to a set of Black Widow’s bites bracelets. “Wait, these look familiar. Hang on, holy shit, are those Black Widow tech?”

Peter nodded, smiling at Harley’s excitement as he picked one up and inspected it carefully. “Wild. Tony said he’d never let me near Avengers tech, and here you are helping manufacture it.” He shook his head in wonder and gazed at Peter. “What kind of spell did you put him under, Parker?”

Peter grinned. “If I told everyone about my magical abilities, I’d be hounded by the press.”

Harley scoffed and rolled his eyes again, the ghost of a smile playing across his mouth, and damn it all to hell if Peter didn’t fall in love just a little bit more. “You’re already hounded by the press, Peter.”

“Yeah, and you’re not helping,” Peter teased, scrunching up a ball of paper and throwing it in Harley’s direction. It hit him in the shoulder. For a second, Peter worried he’d thrown it too hard with his enhanced strength, but Harley’s face of shock quickly morphed to a mischievous grin. 

“I’m holding Widow Bites, Parker, try me.”

Well aware the Bites would not zap him as hard as they would a non-spider-enhanced human, Peter cocked an eyebrow. “Tony would throw you out onto the streets.”

“Perfect. Spider-Man will swoop in to save me just as the thugs get to me and, unable to resist my charm, fall desperately in love with me.”

Peter swallowed. “Oh, so that was your plan the whole time, was it? Come to New York to seduce Spidey?”

“Yeah, and then break his heart for fucking with my friend.”

Peter held his breath, wanting _so_ desperately to just say something. 

_Forget Spider-Man. You’re just really fucking pretty and I want to go on a date with you._

_God, I’m totally fucked._

Harley winked and tossed the Bites at him. Peter, momentarily dazed, didn’t notice as he caught them intuitively, hardly thinking about his reflexes. He panicked after he’d caught them. But Harley only said, “Nice reflexes. You’d be hella good at noodling.”

That broke Peter out of his thoughts (where he had, for maybe the thousandth time, been berating himself over not telling Harley about Spider-Man and simultaneously contemplating telling him). “Excuse me — _noodling?_ ”

“Yep. If you ever come down to Tennessee, I’ll show you myself. It’s tons of fun.” The shit-eating grin had not left his face, and Peter got the feeling Harley wouldn’t be telling him whatever the fuck noodling was or why it required good reflexes anytime soon.

He looked at the ceiling. “Hey F.R.I.D.A.Y., what’s noodling?”

Harley tossed another Bites bracelet at him, which Peter dodged this time. 

“The noodling Harley is referring to is a common activity in much of the Southern United States. It involves wading out into a pond and using your bare hands to catch catfish. Oftentimes, noodling can result in injury as many catfish have large teeth.”

Peter laughed. “I’m not sticking my hands in water to grab a fish, even if I ever visit your tiny yeehaw town of Rose Hill.”

“F.R.I.D.A.Y. missed the best part. You don’t grab the fish, you stick your hand in its mouth.”

“I’m sorry, what? What the fuck? How fucking big are catfish?”

“Will you at least let me teach you how to ride a horse?”

Peter laughed again, and this time the Widow Bites bracelet Harley threw hit him in the face.

\---

It was maybe an hour later (an hour spent productively, at least in Harley’s case, while Peter scrolled through Twitter and occasionally stirred some solution in a beaker) when they left the Tower and headed to Queens. They took the subway, which thankfully was slightly less deathly hot and sweaty than it had been the first day Harley had toured New York City. 

Not that Harley really cared. 

He really hoped Peter didn’t notice how he couldn’t keep his eyes off of him. Harley marveled at how his smile lit up his face, how his ears turned red with embarrassment. 

He knew he’d decided not to fall for Peter Parker, but he also knew that had been a lost cause from day one. And not day one as in day one in New York — no, day one of texting.

No wonder Spider-Man had fallen for him.

They engaged in mostly mindless chatter as they headed to Peter’s apartment. Harley noticed several people raising their phone cameras to take pictures or videos of them on the trip, but he figured that he should try to ignore them as much as Peter did.

Queens was much quieter than Manhattan, Harley quickly realized. Sure, the noise was mostly just as loud and there were just as many people, but with the lack of so many high rise buildings, it almost felt less claustrophobic. A bit more open sky. Now that was something Harley knew.

Peter opened the door when they reached the apartment and instantly scrunched his nose. Harley sniffed and quickly pinpointed the smell of burning food. “Aunt May?” he called as the two of them entered.

Harley looked around. The space almost reminded him of his own house in Rose Hill — comfortable, well lived-in, albeit a bit smaller. 

A brown-haired woman with a bright smile — the same as Peter’s — came into the room. She was wearing an apron and at first glance Harley couldn’t tell if she was twenty or forty. Probably closer to the latter, right?

She interrupted his thoughts. “Hi, I’m May! You must be Harley!”

He extended a hand, but May pulled him into a hug instead. 

“Yeah, I’m Harley! I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Likewise.” May glanced briefly between Peter and him. “Well, I’d offer you breakfast, but… you can probably smell it.” She laughed. “Anyway, make yourself at home. I’m sure Ned and MJ should be around soon? I’m going to clean up the kitchen.”

Peter nodded. ‘Yeah, um, we can hang out in the living room if you want. Or I can give you a tour. A very, _very_ short tour.”

“Sure.” And Peter tugged him off into the tiny hallway behind the kitchen.

“Don’t tell her I said this, but… she can’t cook,” Peter whispered. “I love her to death but it’s not something she’s great at.”

Harley chuckled. “She’s really nice. I like her.”

Peter smiled. “Well, uh, you’ve seen the kitchen and living room and dining room. They’re all kind of meshed. But, um, this is my room.”

There was a bunk bed in the corner with a desk next to it, atop it scattered what looked like various unfinished projects. Lining the top of the wardrobe were several LEGO sets.

“Huh. Are these Star Wars?”

Peter laughed. “Of course that’s the first thing you notice. Uh, yeah. Ned and I have been building them for what feels like forever. He’s got most of them at his house, though. These are the smaller sets.”

“ _Smaller?_ ” Harley pointed to the LEGO stormtrooper helmet that could have probably fit his head if it was hollow. 

“Oh, boy, you should see the Millenium Falcon. It’s like, the size of our dining table. No joke.”

“Y’all have really been living it up with LEGO Star Wars, huh?”

“Hey. Don’t tell me you’re not liking Star Wars.”

Harley lifted his chin. “I may have to watch a few more to fully build up my opinion about that.”

“Good. We’re watching Empire Strikes Back tonight. It’s my favorite.”

“What episode is that?”

“Five.”

“Why are we watching episodes 4 and 5 before 1?”

“Oh, that’s just the way they were filmed —”

There was a call from May. “Peter! MJ’s here, I just buzzed her up!”

“Okay!” Peter looked back at Harley as they left his room. “The first one to come out was episode 4, and then 5 and 6. And then 1 through 3 came out.”

They sat down in the living room, Peter in an old armchair and Harley on the couch. Harley half-wished Peter had sat with him on the couch, so they could be closer.

_Oh, shut up, you dumbass._

Peter kept talking about the order of the movies (Harley had lost him after episode 6) until MJ knocked at the door and let herself in. “Hi, Mrs. Parker,” she called out before dropping her bag and sitting down almost on top of Peter in the armchair. Harley instantly pushed down the wave of jealousy that surged up at the action.

“What’s up, losers?”

“I finally got Harley to watch Star Wars.”

“Correction, he _forced_ me to watch it.”

MJ rolled her eyes. “You and Star Wars, Peter.” She clicked her tongue. “I don’t see what you love so much about it anyway.”

Peter’s loud protest was cut off by the buzzer. “I got it, Aunt May!” He jumped up, leaving MJ to fall into the armchair.

“Saved by the bell.” MJ smirked as she pulled a sketchbook from her book bag. She gave Harley a _very_ pointed look as she spread herself entirely across the armchair.

Peter noticed and sat next to Harley when he came back.

Whatever the fuck MJ was up to, he had no idea. Oh, well. _Let it happen, Keener._

Ned joined them within the minute. And for some reason, as they settled into chattering while Aunt May occasionally input comments from the kitchen, Harley realized — these were his _friends_. And for the first time in a long time, there was no discomfort or unhappiness about it.

\---

**_June 1, 2017_ **

_Group chat: yeehaw boi time_

_9:15 AM_

_BETER:_ happy pride i love u guys

 _nedward:_ omfg i cant bleeeive i forgot

 _nedward:_ happy pride i stand by u always

 _yeehaw man:_ glad to have stumbled into the gayest group of fuckers in nyc

 _yeehaw man:_ happy pride y’all :D [rainbow.emoji]

 _nedward:_ Peter omg have you seen spidey’s twitter

 _BETER:_ uhhhh no

 _BETER:_ why

 _yeehaw man:_ [twitter.jpg]

Bider-Man ✓ @SpiderManOfficial

Happy pride to everyone! Unfortunately in my career as Spider-Man I’ve received a lot of hate and had people question my legitimacy as both a person and an Avenger due to who I am. I love who I love and I am who I am. It doesn’t change anything I do as Spidey. Love is love. <3

_MJ:_ Damn. He didn’t even mention you.

 _BETER:_ … i mean he didn’t have to

 _yeehaw man:_ yikes. Say the word and ill kick his ass

 _BETER:_ lmao no

 _BETER:_ anyway happy june

 _MJ:_ Happy pride, losers.

_Text from: MJ_

_9:33 AM_

_MJ:_ So, would this be a good time to mention that I may or may not have a crush on Shuri?

 _peter-man:_ OH MY GOD MJ

 _peter-man:_ THATS ADORABLE YALL WOULD B SO CUTE TOGETHER

 _peter-man:_ are you gonna do anything? 

_MJ:_ I think I’ll at least tell her. I don’t even know if she’s into girls.

 _peter-man:_ she gives off strong gay vibes i’d say you have a good chance

 _peter-man:_ go get em

 _MJ:_ When the fuck are you going to tell Harley?

 _peter-man:_ listen im working on it

 _peter-man:_ you and ned seem to enjoy fucking with him tho

 _MJ:_ Yes, we do. But he’s gotta find out soon. And within the next two days if I’m going to win that bet.

 _peter-man:_ ughhhhh fine

 _MJ:_ Also, don’t tell Ned about Shuri yet. 

_MJ:_ I just don’t want all the excitement. And I’ll bring it up if anything happens.

 _peter-man:_ gotcha nw

 _peter-man:_ go get em tigers 

_MJ:_ I hate you.

 _peter-man:_ love you too! :)))

\---

Bider-Man ✓ @SpiderManOfficial

Happy pride to everyone! Unfortunately in my career as Spider-Man I’ve received a lot of hate and had people question my legitimacy as both a person and an Avenger due to who I am. I love who I love and I am who I am. It doesn’t change anything I do as Spidey. Love is love. <3

Beter @peterwithab

Rt @SpiderManOfficial. Happy pride everyone! :)

Spidey’s No1 Fan @SpideysNo1Fan

@SpiderManOfficial hell yes! HAPPY PRIDE!!! [rainbow.gif] #spiderman #spidey #biderman #pride

Spider or Die @spidermanismyfavoritehero

@SpiderManOfficial I’m so sorry you’ve had so much hate for being who you are. We love you spidey <3 <3 <3 #biderman #pride

Lou @louisAndclark

@SpiderManOfficial ugh we stan one bi king #biderman

Ned @jedimaster_ned

@peterwithab happy pride! Standing w/ you always

Betty @butter_brant

@SpiderManOfficial [rainbowflag.emoji] #pride

Dudebros Suck @destroyeroffratboys

@SpiderManOfficial so glad there’s an lgbtq superhero/avenger. Thank you for being the representation we all needed <3 #spiderman #pride #bisexual #biderman

StarMan @itsmedavidbowiee

@destroyeroffratboys SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK! @SpiderManOfficial Thank you spidey for being a bicon we love you!!! #spiderman #biderman #pride

Harley Keener @tonystarkbrokeintomygarage

happy pride from your favorite cowboy :)

\---

**_June 3, 2017_ **

Harley knew he shouldn’t be up. Honestly, he had no clue what it was that had woken him up. Unlike most nights, he hadn’t drunk _any_ coffee last night before going to sleep. And he’d passed out rather early, thanks to another long day of walking around New York City with Peter, Ned and MJ.

And yet, somehow, it was two in the fucking morning, and Harley had jolted awake. He glanced at the electronic clock on the bedside table, whose glaring red numbers read _2:04_ _AM._

He rolled over, trying to fall back asleep, but it wouldn’t come back. The more he moved around, the more awake he became. Eventually he threw off the sheets and sat up, shaking his head and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, deciding to check the lab. Tony would almost certainly still be awake at this time.

He padded down the stairs to the lab quietly, still half-asleep. He didn’t realize there were voices arguing in the lab until he had almost walked through the door. Luckily, he stopped a few paces away and glanced around the corner. Whether it was by pure luck or for some other reason that F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn’t alert the people in the lab that Harley was just outside, he didn’t know. Nonetheless, he was grateful she didn’t.

In the lab, Tony was talking to a red-clad figure. It took Harley barely a second to realize that he was talking to Spider-Man himself. At two in the morning? That was weird.

“You gotta be more careful, kid. I’m glad this was just a graze, but I told you no patrol after midnight.” Tony pinched the bridge of his nose as he talked to Spider-Man.

“Yeah, I know. But it’s summer! What else am I supposed to do?”

Harley started. The voice sounded _way_ too familiar. 

Tony sighed. “I know I gave you the watch for protection, but your aunt is still up my ass about keeping you safe. I can’t have you getting hurt, got it? If you want to go out late I’ll let you, but let me know. Or F.R.I.D.A.Y. Or Pep. Hell, I don’t care.”

Harley frowned. Spider-Man’s _aunt?_

And then it all clicked together in his head. Maybe the lack of sleep or the fact that he was still half-asleep was slowing him down. How was he this stupid?

His thought was confirmed when Spider-Man reached up and pulled his mask off. His face was mostly turned away, but Harley would recognize those brown curls anywhere. 

_Peter._

Almost as if he’d heard Harley’s thought, Peter turned slightly to face the door. Harley ducked behind it. 

_Yeah, no shit he heard you. He’s got super hearing. He can probably hear your heart beating right out of your chest right now._

Thankfully, Tony spoke up again, and Peter’s attention was diverted back to him. Harley stood up carefully and slowly backed away, trying his best to make no noise. As soon as he was back up the stairs, he whispered, “F.R.I.D.A.Y., don’t tell anyone I was just there.”

She hummed. “Sure, Harley. Can I ask why?”

He grinned to himself as he returned to his bedroom, mind fully awake now. “Peter doesn’t know I know. Oh, this should be fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw, Ned’s straight. He’s just a great ally :)  
> also, I have no clue whether Harley is bi or gay and therefore Harley does not know either. maybe he'll figure it out
> 
> Hope y'all are staying safe!


	5. Chapter 5

**_June 3, 2017_ **

To be fair, it hadn’t been Peter’s fault that someone had decided to move the crane he was swinging off of and sent him hurtling into a building (who does that? Who goes and moves a crane at 1:30 in the morning?).

On the other hand, though, Mr. Stark was being unnecessarily worried about it. He’d taken Captain America’s shield straight to the face. This was nothing.

“Mr. Stark, I promise I’m fine, I’ll probably be fully healed by tomorrow morning anyway —”

“That’s not the point, Pete. The point is you were out late, probably boggled out of your mind because you haven’t slept enough, and you weren’t awake enough to realize what was happening.”

Peter half-wanted to retort that Mr. Stark didn’t sleep either and had gone out as Iron Man plenty of times with way too little sleep, but he held the comment back. “I know, I’m sorry. I was literally on my way back.”

Peter’s ears picked up a soft _tap-tap-tap_ in the background. He ignored it as Mr. Stark pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at him with weary eyes. “You gotta be more careful, kid. I’m glad this was just a graze, but I told you no patrol after midnight.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s summer! What else am I supposed to do?”

The tapping had morphed into a quiet heartbeat. Peter could barely hear it over Mr. Stark talking and the two of their hearts, but it was there. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_. Its rhythm sounded oddly familiar. Was someone there?

Peter realized with a jolt that Mr. Stark was still talking to him. “— aunt is still up my ass about keeping you safe. I can’t have you getting hurt, got it? If you want to go out late I’ll let you, but let me know. Or F.R.I.D.A.Y. Or Pep. Hell, I don’t care.”

He wasn’t focused on that, though. Peter yanked off his mask to make sure his ears were hearing the sound right. _Ba-dum, ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum_ — yep, the heartbeat had picked up its pace.

He turned around to look at the door, but no one was there. 

Mr. Stark snapped impatient fingers in front of his face. “Pete? You listening to me?”

“Sorry, Mr. Stark, I thought I… heard something.” As soon as he said it, though, the sound completely receded. Had he imagined it?

“You’re probably hallucinating from lack of sleep. F.R.I.D.A.Y., was there anyone Peter could have heard out in the hall?”

“Nope,” the AI responded, sounding amused. “I suggest Peter should get some sleep, it has been a long day.”

Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow at him. “See? Listen to the AI. Go to bed.”

Peter shook his head to get rid of the thought that he’d heard a noise. There hadn’t been anyone there; his spidey sense would have alerted him to whoever it was.

He nodded to Mr. Stark, then resignedly left the lab, dragging his feet on the way to his room.

\---

Harley spent the next few hours after stumbling upon Peter and Tony in the lab pacing circles around his bedroom. He’d decided to fuck with Peter, sure, but figuring out he was Spider-Man had suddenly awakened a _lot_ of thoughts. The least of which were the fact that Peter had probably been able to fucking _hear his heartbeat speeding up every time their eyes met for the past week_.

_(Fuck.)_

And the most important of which were the fact that Peter was Spider-Man and therefore was not dating Spider-Man and therefore _both_ Peter _and_ Spider-Man were currently single.

(Well, unless Peter and MJ had something going on, which Harley wouldn’t doubt, and since MJ no doubt knew about Spider-Man — who was he kidding, of course she knew, she practically orchestrated the whole Spideyparker situation with her letters to BuzzFeed — then they could definitely be dating in secret. Who knew.)

But if they _weren’t_ dating, and Peter was single —

Harley could make a move.

And on top of _that_ thought, he now was contemplating the expansive array of ways that he could fuck with Peter. Oddly enough, he kept coming up empty handed — none of the ideas were ones he liked.

_Ask MJ._

_Why the fuck hadn’t I thought of that before? Brilliant._

Harley got out his phone.

_New text to:_ scary girl

_5:07 AM_

_Harley:_ time to fuck with peter for not telling me about spider-man. He doesn’t know i know. any ideas? 

She replied almost instantly, which he was not expecting. It was barely five am, after all.

_scary girl:_ Thank fucking god. Ned owes me $10.

 _scary girl:_ Before we get to business, how did you find out?

 _Harley:_ he was in the lab with Tony at 2 am. full suit

 _Harley:_ hol up, did y’all BET on how soon i’d find out?

 _Harley:_ im hurt

 _scary girl:_ Of course he was. I assume you heard his voice.

 _scary girl:_ By the way, stalking them in the lab at 2 AM isn’t creepy at all.

 _scary girl:_ And also, I bet within the first 5 days, I had faith.

 _scary girl:_ But that’s irrelevant. Now, to business.

\---

Tony was fairly sure he hadn’t slept in the last forty-eight hours. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had finally shut up about it (probably because he’d told her if she told him to sleep _one more time_ , he’d recode her). 

As it was, he’d left the Tower this morning at half past four am, after making sure Peter had gotten to bed, in the Iron Man suit, to fly to the compound. Why?

Nick Fury. That’s fucking why.

The rogue Avengers had received their house arrest sentences at the beginning of April, and had been holed up at the compound ever since. Or so Tony had _thought._ He’d found out this week that apparently, Nick Fury had been pulling them — Steve and Natasha mostly — to help with undercover missions to take down the remnants of HYDRA. (Why HYDRA wasn’t entirely gone at this point, Tony didn’t know.) 

Tony wasn’t sure why he was surprised. Hell, he’d suspected this. He’d even told Steve that Fury would probably try to recruit him as soon as he was back in the United States.

Why the hell he’d thought Steve would say no to Fury, he had no idea. Of fucking _course_ Captain America was going to want to help destroy the rest of HYDRA.

So here he was. Flying over upstate New York in an Iron Man suit. America must think he was going insane.

Not that he’d ever cared what they thought.

It was only a few more minutes before he spotted the compound and began descending. He landed heavily on the porch, the suit cracking open and letting him step out. (He hadn’t quite finished the nanoparticle Iron Man suit — he’d been busy perfecting the method with Peter’s suit first).

Tony stalked into the compound only to be surprised when he found himself face to face with a tired-looking Sam Wilson. The man looked like he’d dragged himself out of bed five minutes ago, despite it being — what time was it?

 _Five past five AM,_ said the clock hanging on the wall.

Sam looked just as confused as Tony felt. “Uh, what’s up, Stark?”

He finally came to his senses. “Cap. Where is he?”

Sam shrugged, blinking slowly. “Probably asleep, like any sane person?”

Tony pursed his lips and clapped Wilson on the back. “Right.” And he stalked off, in the direction of Steve’s bedroom, not caring whether the man was awake or not.

Steve, as it was, _was_ awake. Tony, for some reason, had envisioned walking in on Steve in the full Captain America outfit, ready to walk out the door at Fury’s beck and call. He found himself shaking off an inexplicable disappointment at finding him in a regular T-shirt (as always, far too small for his frame and stretching around his chest) and shorts. 

“Tony?”

Tony didn’t even spare a hi. “Let’s think about a hypothetical situation right now, okay?” He ignored the bewildered look in Steve’s eyes and pushed forward. “I’m dealing with some huge press conferences for Stark Industries, on top of managing two horny teenagers living in the Tower, one of which keeps staying out past curfew and getting hurt in stupid situations because he has spider powers and decided to be a hero, and I think we’ve finally got all of the Accords and everything with that over with, only to find out at half past one in the morning that Nick Fury has been dragging Captain America and Black Widow’s asses out of the compound _despite your house arrest order from the International Court of Justice_ to go fight HYDRA.”

He paused and took a breath. The bewildered look hadn’t left Steve’s face yet. 

“So what the fuck do you have to say to me then, Cap, given this _hypothetical_ situation?”

Steve frowned. “Tony —”

“I don’t want a bullshit excuse. Why the _fuck_ are you breaking house arrest? Do you want another fucking disaster with the UN? Because as much as I know you don’t care, that affects a certain spider-boy who _I’m_ responsible for.”

Steve was still frowning. He paused, watching Tony to make sure he was done before he started talking again. “Tony, I thought you _knew_. Maybe you forgot, but you told me yourself that Fury was going to recruit us back in Switzerland.”

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting the urge to punch Steve in his perfect teeth. “Yes, I did. I told you that as a _warning_ , not as an, ‘okay, let him recruit you’! God, you’re an idiot.”

Tony instantly wanted to take it back. Steve’s frown deepened. 

“Sorry if I thought you were giving us the go-ahead, Tony, but that’s what it sounded like.”

“Listen, I’m usually all for telling the authorities to fuck off,” Tony sighed frustratedly. “But if you _actually_ stayed here and _behaved_ , the UN might actually cut your house arrest sentence short. And need I remind you again that your actions have consequences?”

“Peter, of course. Well, if you’re really that upset about it, I’ll tell Fury to find someone else for the job. Nat might be harder to convince though, you know.”

“Pfft, who do you think you’re kidding? Nat will follow whatever you do.” Tony paused and glanced at Steve from the corner of his eye. “You’ll really do that?”

“Listen, Tony, I really messed up before. I know that, and I just want to make things better. Besides, Peter’s identity being compromised isn’t worth it.”

Tony narrowed his eyes. He didn’t trust Steve, but he didn’t think he was lying either. He wanted to comment that it wasn’t wholly Steve’s fault — that Bucky was innocent, and he’d been right about that. 

But he didn’t. 

“Alright. Well, I’ll try to bring the kid up to the compound sometime soon to start training with the team. As soon as he quits being a fool and tells Harley about Spider-Man. That should keep you and Nat occupied.”

“Can’t believe he hasn’t told him yet.” Steve was smiling. “But that sounds like a plan.”

Tony gave Cap one last look and left the room. And despite the fact that somehow he’d gotten Steve to agree to stop going with Fury on HYDRA missions, that it had been _easy_ to convince him…

It didn’t feel like a victory, and Tony didn’t feel any better. As a matter of fact, he felt more at a loss for words or thoughts than he had before.

He tried to forget about it as he got in the suit and blasted off towards New York City again.

\---

Harley had really thought he could last at least a whole day without spilling. To be fair, though, he didn’t exactly end up spilling. 

Peter didn’t get up until almost eleven, and while that gave him extra time to plan what he was going to do, all it ended up doing was making him more nervous. His brain had a tendency to overthink the smallest things.

 _But this isn’t a small thing! He didn’t tell you about Spider-Man_ — _he didn’t trust you._

Which obviously led to:

_You must’ve done something to make him angry. He doesn’t trust you, so he probably doesn’t even like you. Actually, he probably hates you. A lot._

On and on it went, and by the time Peter actually came down to the lab, Harley was completely convinced that Peter was going to kick his ass. He was oddly relieved when Peter shot him a tired “good morning”.

It wasn’t going to get in the way of him fucking with Peter, though. 

“Howdy. _Someone_ slept in.”

“I was up pretty late.” Peter fidgeted.

Harley pretended not to notice, pushing his plaid sleeves up his arms for what felt like (and probably was, to be honest) the millionth time that day. “Doin’ what?”

“Uh… I was just down here. Didn’t notice the time.”

_Okay, so half-true._

“Did you hear about Spider-Man? Apparently he hit a crane last night.”

“Where’d you — let me guess. Buzzfeed?”

“I think it was _New York Daily_ or something like that, actually. You wouldn’t have happened to stay up so late to take care of a certain spider, hmmm?” Harley glanced out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge Peter’s reaction. He just looked confused. 

“Uh, I mean, I wanted to make sure he was okay. But he didn’t stay long.”

Harley hummed. “Sure.”

If Peter thought anything about his behavior was strange, he didn’t mention it.

“So what about you? How early did you get up?”

“Oh, half past three or so. Michelle texted me.”

Peter laughed. “What about?”

“Not sure.” He shrugged. “She was being vague and mentioning some bet she had with Ned about you.”

Peter’s laugh was nervous this time. He shuffled his feet. “What about? I’m pretty sure they have a million of those.”

“Ugh, I don’t remember. I _was_ half-asleep.”

“Is Twitter still on you being Spider-Man?”

 _Nice try to change the topic, Peter._ “Yeah. Not that I mind, though. Somehow half the internet thinks I’m _that_ hot.”

Peter sputtered, choking on his coffee. “ _What?”_

“Oh, c’mon. You’ve dated him, don’t tell me he’s not hot. Like I remember saying before we met in person, I can admire a body through spandex.” He paused, feigning thoughtfulness. “Not that the spandex leaves too much to the imagination.”

Harley shot Peter a wink, and Peter choked on his coffee again. His ears were _very_ red, the blush creeping up his neck and onto his face too. 

“I mean, I — I guess not? And yeah, he is. I mean, spider genes and all.”

They settled into their usual rhythm pretty soon after that. (Peter’s ears were still red.) Harley got out his phone and texted MJ quickly when Peter wasn’t looking.

_New text to:_ scary girl

_11:15 AM_

_Harley:_ thANK you for the idea of gassing up spidey in front of hi

Once again, she replied instantly.

_scary girl:_ Only wish I could be there. How’s he reacting?

 _Harley:_ i think he’s trying to act normal. But he’s confused as hell and his whole face is red

 _Harley:_ im trying so hard not to laugh

 _scary girl:_ He texted me asking what I told you. I’m not responding.

 _Harley:_ good. How long dyou think b4 he figures it out?

 _scary girl:_ Peter’s smart, but also really oblivious sometimes. I’m counting on a good long while.

 _Harley:_ does ned know

 _scary girl:_ No. I love him and _will_ get my money but he’d tell Peter.

 _Harley:_ poor ned

 _Harley:_ he tries his best

 _scary girl:_ I want pictures after this whole ordeal is through with.

 _Harley:_ well i cant record on my phone w/o looking sus but i’m sure i can wheedle it out of friday

\---

“So, what’s it like?” Harley asked out of nowhere, a while later. It seemed today was going to be spent entirely in the lab. Not that he was complaining — he got to spend more time alone with Peter (and fuck around with him? perfect). 

Peter looked up from a diagram he’d been meticulously hand-drawing for the last fifteen minutes. “What’s what like?”

“I mean, I know y’all aren’t really… seeing each other anymore. But still. What’s it like to date a _superhero_?”

Peter fidgeted and the color returned to his ears. “Uh, ummm…”

“Oh, c’mon Petey-pie, you can tell me. My lips are zipped, promise.”

Harley fought to keep his face in a neutral expression as he watched Peter try to find how to describe himself as if he was dating himself. _Oh, Peter darlin’. You’re a wonderful person but the shittiest actor ever._

Actually, the more time that passed, the more Harley found himself wondering exactly how the fuck Peter had managed to keep his a secret for so long.

Peter was still struggling to find words. “Well, it… I don’t know how to… it’s honestly just like dating any regular non-superhero.”

“Are you _sure_ about that? You’re not gonna get dates on the top of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Empire State Building with any regular non-superhero.”

“That’s fair.” Peter cleared his throat, which Harley was quickly learning was one of his tells. Well, besides the obvious fidgeting and blushing and all that. “No, but other than that… I mean, he’s just a normal person. Spider-Man is just… part of who he is. It’s not all of him.”

Now that sounded genuine. Harley furrowed his eyebrows at what sounded like wistfulness in Peter’s tone.

“You sound almost sad about that.”

Peter glanced back at Harley. “No, no! It’s just… I guess I wish more people saw him like that.”

Harley crossed his arms and hmmed. _I see you that way_. 

_You’re Peter. Not that you’re not Spider-Man, and not that he’s not important, but… you can take off the mask. You can’t take off your face. And I like Peter._

Harley almost said it out loud. He really wanted to.

_Save the sappiness for another time, Harley. Focus on the moment._

“Well, it’s… I’m glad he had you. But really, c’mon, there’s gotta be something great about dating a superhero. For example — you can’t just go back to regular sized dick now, can you?”

“Oh my fucking God — Harley!”

He grinned. “What?”

“Ughhhhh, I _hate_ you. Why would you say that?” Peter groaned, dropping his face to the table.

“Okay, but tell me I’m wrong.”

Peter didn’t respond, just groaning more. Harley laughed. Eventually, Peter spoke up again. “At least _I_ don’t spend my time shoving onions and other various vegetables up my asshole.”

“ _Hey!_ That was _one time!_ And it was a hypothetical question!”

“Mmmmhmmm. Sure it was.”

Harley wagged a wrench in Peter’s general direction. “You’re changing the subject to avoid talking about Spider-Man’s massive dick, aren’t you?”

Which was, of course, the exact moment Tony decided to walk in. He looked downright exhausted — which was usually a given, but even more so than usual.

“Please tell me I didn’t fucking hear that sentence.” 

Peter banged his head down onto the lab table and covered his face.

“So why are you talking about Spider-Man’s ‘massive dick’? Actually, scratch that, I am _not_ interested. I just got back from reprimanding a hundred year old man and I do _not_ have the brain capacity for you two.”

Peter perked up at that. “What? You were reprimanding Captain America?”

Tony’s eyes rolled so aggressively at the name that it was a wonder they didn’t go all the way back into his head. “Yep. The one and only.” Harley wondered just how much Tony had slept last night.

“Why?”

“Because the asshat was being irresponsible. He said he’d stop. We’ll see if he holds up his end of the bargain.” 

“Wait, Peter, you _know_ Captain America?” No sooner had the words left Harley’s mouth did he realize, _of fucking course he knows Captain America, you dimwit. He’s a fucking Avenger, for Christ’s sake._

The question only proved to work in his favor, though, because Peter froze up and quickly tried to backtrack.

“Uh, I just… met him once or twice. And Spidey talks about him a lot.”

If Harley hadn’t already known Peter was Spider-Man, he would have bet a hundred bucks he would have figured it out in that instant from the look Tony gave Peter. It practically screamed, ‘ _really? You’re still trying to cover your ass on that? Just tell him.’_

For a second, Harley’s head filled with the bitter feeling of resentment that not even Tony had told him about Spider-Man. It was gone as soon as it came — of course Tony would have let Peter make the decision on that and not forced him.

Which begged the question, _again_ — why hadn’t Peter just told him?

Tony’s next words broke through Harley’s thoughts. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. I don’t think I ever want to hear the phrase ‘Spider-Man’s massive dick’ ever again —” Peter blushed and covered his face again, and some drooling, incoherent part of Harley’s brain went, _he’s adorable can I please fuck him “_ — so please keep it out of your conversations. At least while I’m around. With all the eye-fucking you two do, God knows what you do when I’m _not_ around.”

Peter squeaked. Harley’s brain was a little slower, but as soon as he’d processed the words he let out out a completely incoherent noise. He turned to yell “WHAT?” after Tony, but the man had already left.

“Wow, Tony, not… awkward at all.”

Peter was shaking his head and looked mortified. Harley tried to catch his eye, but Peter was avidly avoiding looking at him.

“He — I’m sorry, do you think we do that?”

Harley stared. His heart sped up. “Do what?”

“ _Eye-fucking_ , Harls?”

“Uhhhhh, no? I don’t think so?”

_Keener, you fucking liar. You know you do. Maybe Peter doesn’t do it back, but you certainly do it._

_Ohhh, so maybe_ that’s _why he doesn’t trust you. Or like you. Because you’re a creep._

_Yep, that checks out. God, what a fucking loser._

Peter was still avoiding his eyes. “Oh. Okay.” He sounded almost disappointed.

The playfulness wandered back into Harley’s voice. “Well, if you _want_ me… I assumed you had enough eye-fucking from Spidey, y’know, but if you _want_ me to I can start —”

Peter cut him off. “You’re terrible.” But he was looking Harley in the eye again and was laughing.

“Aw, but you know you love me.”

“That’s debatable. I’ve known you for like three days.”

“I’m wounded, Petey-pie. Today is day six since we met in person, and did you forget all the wonderful conversations we had over Twitter and text —”

“Ah, yes, it’s coming back to me, we had so many wonderful conversations about shoving onions up asses —”

Harley ignored him. “— _and_ not to mention you call me _Harls.”_

“I can stop if you want.”

“Now whyever would I want that?”

Peter grinned. “You’re a little shit, you know that?”

Harley dramatically put his hand over his heart. “Me? I’d never. But I did learn from the best — Peter Parker himself.”

Peter threw a pencil at him and laughed.

And Harley hadn’t intended this as the outcome of fucking with Peter over Spider-Man, but… whatever _this_ was, he was glad it had happened.

\---

Good things seldom last, though, right?

They’d been in the lab almost the entire day. The sun was starting to set through the windows when Peter broke the comfortable silence that had settled between the two of them for the last half hour and said, “Why have you been asking so much about Spider-Man today?”

And for the first time, Harley was the one who was sent reeling trying to come up with an answer.

“I… I mean… well, I… I guess…” 

Peter waited.

“I guess you just never talk about him. And I know you have reasons but also… I thought maybe laughing about it would make it better.”

Peter smiled. “Yeah, I did enjoy today. I —”

Harley interrupted him. _Out with it._ “Peter, I know.”

“You know? Know what?”

Harley smiled at him. “I _know_ you’re Spider-Man, you dumbass.”

Peter froze. “What? I’m not —”

_He still doesn’t trust me?_

Well, that kind of hurt. Harley’s smile dropped. “Peter, I saw you in the suit in the lab with Tony this morning. I know.”

Peter shut his mouth and averted his eyes. It didn’t take long before they found their way back to Harley’s. “So  _ you  _ were out in the hallway?”

“You heard me?”

“Yeah. I thought I was hallucinating from lack of sleep.” Peter gave a small laugh.

“Nope. I told F.R.I.D.A.Y. not to tell you so I could fuck with you about it.”

“So  _ that’s  _ what everything today was about. Jeez, you really had me worried for a second there.” Peter’s smile dropped from his face, though, and he looked at his feet. “Harley, I’m so sorry.”

Harley’s brow furrowed, but instead of asking  _ why are you sorry _ , the words that came out of his mouth were harsher than he intended. “Yeah, why didn’t you tell me?”

Peter looked a bit taken aback. “Well, um… I don’t know, I was just really stupid. And when I found out you were actually coming to New York I kind of freaked out because I’d been living this lie and you believed it too. And I really was planning on telling you, even before you came, but I just… it’s almost instinct to lie about it, not that it’s not instinct to lie to you _specifically_ about it, and… oh God, this is all coming out wrong, and I’m rambling.” He took a breath and continued before Harley could stop him. “Listen, just… every time I wanted to bring it up, I instead found myself saying something about dating him — myself, I mean — and so instead I just dug myself into a deeper and deeper hole each time and… I didn’t mean to. I really did want to tell you.” He paused, then added. “I’m sorry.”

Harley smiled, but it was bitter. The emotion bubbling up inside of him wasn’t happiness. “You couldn’t have just outright said it at some point? It’s easy as, ‘Harley, I’m Spider-Man. Just wanted you to know.’ It’s not like I was going to spew that to the next person that came along. I hid Tony’s suit in my garage for several days.” The more words that spilled out, the angrier he got.

_Why didn’t you trust me?_

“Harley, it’s really not that I didn’t trust you to keep the secret, I know about the Mandarin. I’m sorry —”

Harley’s anger reared its ugly head again. “So why didn’t you tell me?”

For once, he wished he’d shut up and just accepted the apology like a normal person, because Peter’s face hardened at the question, a muscle moving in his jaw as he clenched it. “Listen, man, I don’t owe you my whole life story and I certainly didn’t owe you this information. We may be friends but we met in person barely a week ago. I got really fucked up by the last person who found out I was Spider-Man. He tried to kill me. And I know you’re not a supervillain and I know you’re just a really kind and caring person but it’s the _one_ thing I have to be careful about, okay?”

Harley couldn’t even get his mouth open to respond before Peter had nimbly jumped over two lab tables and run out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, it only took 23k words to reach the angst. Life is a handful right now, so I dunno how much I'll be updating, but keep an eye out for the next chapter! Hoping everyone’s safe and healthy. Thanks for reading and for all your lovely comments!
> 
> (Edit 12/3: hello friends, life has been a lot recently. I will be getting back to this story over winter break and updating as often as I can! I had to take a few months off of writing because my schedule has been so full this semester, but I promise I will be back soon! Thank you for your love and patience and thank you for reading :))


	6. Chapter 6

**_June 3, 2017_ **

_ Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. _

Why’d he done that?

Peter was not naturally an angry person. At all. He  _ never  _ got angry, as a matter of fact. So what the fuck had that outburst been? Why’d he yell at Harley? About something totally unreasonable, too. 

_ (He trusted you with a lot. And you didn’t trust him back.) _

Of course Harley would have felt hurt about Peter keeping his secret from him. But… Ned hadn’t. MJ hadn’t — although, to be fair, she’d figured it out on her own. They’d both known him longer, and neither of them had gotten mad about this. Had they?

Peter tried to think about it. If either of them had been really mad, they hadn’t shown it; then again, Ned had been too excited to contemplate that Peter was Spider-Man to think about the fact that he had been keeping it a secret from him, his best friend. MJ… well, sometimes it was hard to tell if MJ cared. But Peter liked to think he knew her well enough by now that if she’d gotten mad, he would have known.    
  
_ Was  _ he being unreasonable? He should have been gentler with Harley. 

Peter pulled out his phone to text MJ and Ned — they’d know what to do — but stopped halfway to opening the text message app. His own rage-filled words floated back into his mind, almost as if on a phantom breeze.  _ I got really fucked up by the last person who found out I was Spider-Man. _

_ He tried to kill me. _

And suddenly, Peter wasn’t in his room in Stark Tower anymore. He was in the back of a car, Liz talking next to him as they wound their way through the busy streets of Queens towards Midtown High. Peter sat ramrod straight as two old eyes in the rearview mirror watched him carefully from under furrowed eyebrows. 

Peter didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly he felt as though the breath had been knocked out of his lungs completely. His lungs fruitlessly heaved for air; all he could taste was old cement dust settling around him as the building atop him crushed him under its weight. 

_ Oh my god, oh my god, not again, not again, not AGAIN  _ —

His torso screamed in pain as the parking garage fell on him, lungs still failing to fill with enough air. His breathing quickened along with his heart, and Peter shut his eyes to try and shake the memory. Shutting his eyes only made it worse — as if he was at the bottom of a lake, trying to swim upwards to the surface, but he didn’t know which way was up. 

_ Help! HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP!  _

And out of the blackness, an image, clear as day — his old mask, the stupid goggles affixed to the red fabric, fallen in a puddle of water in front of him. The weight above him disappeared.

Peter breathed heavily through his nostrils, feeling a rush of air finally make its way into his lungs. He cradled his head in his hands. The scent of cement and old buildings slowly receded, replaced by the familiar smell of his room. Somewhere along the way, he’d slid down the wall and fallen to the floor. He tried not to think about the fact that he couldn’t remember doing that, curling his arms around his knees and trying to focus his eyes on a spot across the room. His heart fluttered wildly, and Peter frantically pressed a hand to the hollow of his throat, as if that would slow it down.

Slowly but surely, his mind calmed down and his ears picked up a knocking noise. 

Someone was at his door.

That simple fact threw Peter all the way back into the present. “Uhm, yeah, who is it?” he stumbled over his words, hoping he sounded normal, as he picked himself off the floor.

“Kid, are you  _ okay?  _ Fri won’t let me in.”

It was Mr. Stark.

Peter opened the door to a  _ very  _ worried face. “What’s going on?”

“What? Why — why would— what do you mean?”

Mr. Stark, after having made sure that he wasn’t in immediate danger of dying, squinted at him. “Your watch. Elevated heart rate, and I heard something fall over —”

He cut himself off mid-sentence, looking Peter in the eye. “Kid, did you have a panic attack?”

Peter was bewildered. “ _ What? _ How did you —”

Mr. Stark took a deep breath. “Peter. Are you okay, kid?”

“I’m — I’m fi-”

“No, you’re not. You’re  _ shaking _ . Where’s Harley?”

Peter didn’t respond, not meeting Mr. Stark’s eyes. Mr. Stark gently took his arm and led him to sit down on his bed.    


“Okay, breathe with me. Breathe, Peter. You’re okay.”

Peter took a breath. It got easier the more he did it, but it still felt as though there wasn’t enough air reaching his lungs. Like his throat was closing up. Eventually, he had calmed down enough that the sound of his heartbeat didn’t feel like it was going to break his eardrums.

“What happened?” asked Mr. Stark gently.

He waited as Peter took several more breaths before speaking, still not quite meeting his eyes. “I… yeah, had a panic attack. Just the stupid—stupid building falling on me again. How did you know?”

Tony gave him a small, gentle smile. “I know it when I see it, kid. I’m sorry about the Vulture. Do you want to talk about it?”

Peter shrugged. “It’s just — a stupid fight.” A pause. “Harley knows.”

“You told him?”

“No, he found out. He was in the lab this morning.” Peter nervously dropped his eyes again, shame washing over him like a wave. “But I— I don’t know, he was mad that I kept it a secret and didn’t tell him. And I told him that, y’know, it’s the one thing I have to be careful about.”

Mr. Stark was quiet for a bit. When he finally spoke up, it was to say, “That boy is gonna get an earful —”

“No, Mr. Stark,  _ please _ , don’t.”

He turned to look at Peter again. “Pete, kid, you had every reason to keep it secret. Harley should know that.”

Peter half-smiled. “He doesn’t know what it’s like, Mr. Stark.”

“Doesn’t mean he gets to be a bitch about it.”

Peter let out a small chuckle, but it sounded strained. Tony obviously noticed, because he turned worried eyes back on him. “Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I just… I thought I was over the Vulture, and everything that happened with Homecoming,” Peter admitted. “It kinda just sucks that I guess I’m not.”

Tony gave him a pat on the knee. Peter appreciated the fact that there was no pity in his eyes, simply understanding. He didn’t want pity — it would just make moving on that much harder.

“Right, well, do you want me to talk to Harley? Because I have some words for that kid — words too harsh for your innocent little ears to hear —”

Peter laughed, a little less strained this time, and decided not to remind him of the  _ many  _ times Tony had cursed around him. “No, uhm, please don’t be too hard on him, Mr. Stark.”

“Kid, I told you a million times. You can call me  _ Tony _ .” He squinted at Peter, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Are you gonna talk to him, then?”

Peter felt the shame wash over him again, ears turning red. He’d just — he’d just  _ blown up  _ at Harley and then left before he could say anything. The thought of going back down to the lab made Peter want to crawl under a rock. 

“No. Umm, I think I’m going to go out on patrol, I haven’t been out yet. Talk to Ned and MJ.”

Tony nodded, fixing him with a stern look. “As long as you don’t stay out too late and get bonked by a crane again, okay?”

“Yeah.” Peter paused again, and it was silent. Not awkwardly so, but just enough that he could hear his blood roaring in his ears. “Listen, I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, I didn’t mean to —”

Tony held up a hand and cut him off. “Kid, if you were about to apologize for having a panic attack, save it.” His tone softened. “You have nothing to apologize for, okay? I’m here for you, your aunt is here for you, Pep’s here for you. If you ever want to talk to a professional about it, I can set you up with someone from Helen’s department. Alright?”

“But— they won’t…?” He stopped halfway through the question, leaving it hanging in midair, as soon as he realized that of  _ course  _ they wouldn’t spread the news that he was Spider-Man because they’d treated his injuries often enough that they already  _ knew _ . (Not to mention the confidentiality agreements and NDAs.)

But Tony didn’t berate him for not realizing it, instead saying, “No, your secret’d be perfectly safe. And it would actually be a therapist, not someone like Bruce, because I was dumb enough for that to happen only once.”

Peter cocked his head in confusion, and Mr. Stark sighed. “I may or may not have dumped everything that happened with the Mandarin on Banner after it was over. Not a smart move.”

Peter couldn’t stop the breath of laughter that left his nose at that. 

“Alright, quit laughing at me.” A hint of an unreadable emotion — happiness? Pride? — flickered in his dark eyes. “Go out on patrol and save some cats, underoos.”

\---

Harley had been screaming at himself internally since Peter left the lab.

At first, he’d been too shocked to respond to what Peter had said.  _ I got really fucked up by the last person who found out I was Spider-Man. He tried to kill me.  _

By the time he’d snapped out of his shock and tried to follow Peter out of the lab, he was long gone. He debated going to find him, immediately apologizing. But the nagging voice that said  _ fuck you, the last thing he wants right now is to see you again _ , persisted for long enough that Harley turned around and sat down at one of the lab tables again. He’d sat for what felt like an eternity but was probably less than five minutes, staring at the mechanical blueprint Peter had hand drawn earlier, trying to forget about what had happened and focus on the design. 

But for the first time in possibly his whole life, he couldn’t bring his attention back to the mechanical problem in front of him. Guilt had replaced his shock so quickly he felt like he had emotional whiplash.  _ Why the fuck did you have to do that? Why didn’t you shut up and accept the apology the first time? Why did you have to ruin the best thing that has happened to you in years? _

_ You’re fucking fantastic at driving away anyone who may dare to be your friend, Keener. _

Unable to sit still or focus on anything but Peter, Harley replayed the exchange in his head over and over. 

_ “Harley, I’m so sorry.” _

_ “Yeah, why didn’t you tell me?” _

What a fucking douchebag. Peter had  _ every right  _ in the world not to tell him, and not just because he’d almost been killed by the last person who discovered his identity. 

_ “We may be friends, but we met in person barely a week ago.” _

Entirely true. Why the fuck had Harley acted so entitled? He’d had  _ no _ right.  _ None. _

Harley sat in the lab for no more than five minutes after Peter had left, but by the time he left and ran to find Peter and apologize, to say  _ I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking stupid, you had every right to not tell me, I’m so sorry,  _ Peter was gone.

_ Stupid, stupid, stupid! You should have followed him, apologized immediately! What the fuck did you do instead? Wallow like an idiot.  _

He scoured the entire penthouse for Peter before asking F.R.I.D.A.Y. 

The AI didn’t get the chance to answer his question before Harley felt a familiar hand on his shoulder. “Peter left for patrol five minutes ago, kid.”

The disappointment in Tony’s voice was so heavy, so all-encompassing, that Harley didn’t want to turn around and face him. His heart, which had been in his throat, sunk to the pit of his stomach.

“ _ Fuck.  _ I fucked up, Tony.”

The hand dropped from his shoulder, but instead of confirming it like Harley had thought he would, Tony instead asked, “What did you say to him?”

_ Some fucking horrible things.  _

“I asked why he hadn’t told me he was Spider-Man. I’m — god, fuck, I’m such an idiot. And then I didn’t even follow him to say sorry right away. He had every right to keep that from me and I had to go and ruin it all.”

“Turn around, kid.”

Harley did, not meeting Tony’s eyes. He didn’t want to see the disgust there. 

But Tony’s tone wasn’t angry. It was harsh,  _ exhausted _ , but not cold. “Yeah, you fucked up, I won’t lie. You shouldn’t have acted the way you did. I wanted Peter to tell you. Hell, I was confused when he kept it from you this long.” He paused. “But at the end of the day, that’s  _ his  _ choice,  _ his  _ identity,  _ his  _ secret to tell.” Harley flinched at the truth inflected in every word that came from Tony’s mouth. 

_ His choice. His identity. His secret to tell.  _ Of course it was. It may not be anything like coming out of the closet, but Harley at least knew how that felt. 

“I feel awful. I shouldn’t’ve acted so  — like that.” Tears pricked the corner of his eyes. “I felt like he didn’t trust me at all, after everything, but… either way, it wasn’t my business.”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to. But I will tell you that superhero business is tricky shit, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up because Peter didn’t tell you. When Ned and that scary girl found out, it wasn’t because Peter told them. As far as I remember, Ned was in Peter’s room when he came back from patrol, and MJ figured it out on her own. It doesn’t mean he didn’t trust them  — like I said, it’s tricky shit.”

“He told me  — ” Harley gulped, not knowing whether he should go on. “He told me he almost got killed last time someone found out.”

The cold fire that blossomed in Tony’s eyes was enough to tell Harley that that was entirely true, and whoever it was was at the top of Iron Man’s kill list.

“Yes. That was a huge fuck-up on my end too. But again, that’s his story to tell if he wants to.” Tony caught Harley’s eyes again. “You realized your mistake immediately, but you have a serious amount of apologizing to do. Peter will come around  — I don’t think there’s anything he  _ won’t  _ forgive. But flowers, chocolates, strawberries-type apologizing.” 

“Strawberries?”

“On second thought, maybe check to see if he’s allergic first."

“Fuck, Tony. I… fucked up so bad. I’m so sorry. I just... I don’t want to lose him.” The admission had passed his lips before he could stop it; Harley almost wanted to die on the spot from embarrassment. But it was true. 

Tony sighed. “Listen here, Keener. Peter  _ adores  _ you, even if you don’t have enough brain cells to see it. I doubt he wants to lose you either. You’re a good kid, Keener, when you don’t have your head up your ass. But I already said it  — I’m not the one you need to be apologizing to.”

There was a long silence. “You really think I should get chocolate and flowers?  _ Strawberries? _ ”

Tony let out a terse laugh and rolled his eyes. “Ask Pepper. I’m notoriously terrible at apologies.”

\---

MJ answered on the first ring. Ned picked up on the second. 

Peter had been swinging through the city for a while now; the sunlight had gone completely, the sky the light periwinkle of twilight. Peter had always loved watching New York transition from day to night — the way the colors shifted, the shadows dropped, how all the lights turned on slowly, how the noise never diminished whatsoever.

“Harley knows.” He said it before either of his friends could even fit in a hello. His tone was enough that neither of them cheered.

“What happened, Peter?” Ned asked immediately, his voice somber.

“I’m such an idiot.” And he told his two best friends the whole story — how Harley had brought up Spider-Man several times throughout the day, how Harley had told him “I know you’re Spider-Man”, how it had been fine until Harley had asked why Peter hadn’t told him and  _ kept asking _ even though Peter said he’d wanted to tell him. How he’d yelled — how he’d unreasonably just  _ blown up _ — and left the lab in a hurry, how he’d had a panic attack in front of Mr. Stark. And as he spoke, Peter’s throat tied itself into a knot and his vision blurred as the tears started to fall in earnest.

“Whoa, slow down,” Ned said when he had finished. “Peter, how does that make  _ you  _ the idiot?”

“I don’t — I don’t know. I just, god, I feel like such a dumbass. I shouldn’t have yelled at him. I should have told him earlier.”

MJ, who had been uncharacteristically silent up until now, finally spoke up. “I’m going to kick his ass. Fuck, I’m so sorry, Peter. He’s such a jerk.”

“He’s not —”

But he was cut off by MJ. “Are you out on  _ patrol  _ right now?”

Peter  _ thwipped  _ out another length of web and swung around a building, flipping naturally in midair as he fell before shooting out another web. It was like tying his shoes, at this point, to swing around and off buildings. So natural, he didn’t have to think about it. So freeing, to move so fast, slicing through the air. He’d been on autopilot for the last several minutes while he explained the story, and absently realized he was halfway back to Queens already.

“Yeah, why?”   


“Peter Benjamin Parker, are you in the right mind to be doing that right now? After what happened last night? At least set down on a bridge or something!”

He reluctantly did so, swinging out and stopping on top of a particularly tall building. It probably was for the better, anyway; he didn’t want a repeat of early this morning.

As soon as he’d set down, MJ started again. “Peter, you are  _ not  _ an idiot at all. Or selfish, or any of that shit I know you’re telling yourself right now. If you didn’t want to tell Harley you were Spider-Man, you didn’t have to. He shouldn’t have been angry you didn’t tell him.”

Peter didn’t argue. Logically, he knew he had been in the right. Mr. Stark and now MJ and Ned had at least gotten that into his brain. But he still felt terrible. “I just… I feel like a jerk for getting worked up and yelling at him.”

“Listen to me, Peter.” MJ’s tone was serious. “Ned and I know you and we know you would  _ never  _ just yell at someone out of nowhere. Harley must have provoked you a  _ lot _ .”

“Yeah,” Ned agreed. “You’re, like, the most mellow person I know, Peter. You don’t just yell at people.” 

“Which is why I feel really awful.” Peter paused, listening for a second to the honking on the streets below. “I mean, I should apologize, right?”

MJ scoffed, but it wasn’t unkind. “You’re joking, right? Peter,  _ he’s  _ the one who needs to apologize, not you. Don’t beat yourself up over it, okay?”

“So what do I do?”

“Do you mean before or after I finish kicking his ass?” MJ asked. “If I know that boy, he’s called you at least twice already, right?”

Pete didn’t know. He’d set Karen to turn away any calls from Harley while he was on patrol already. He almost didn’t want to ask her. If Harley  _ hadn’t  _ called, he’d just feel worse. “I don’t know. I had Karen block him.”

Ned spoke up. “I’m sure he’ll apologize, Peter. Whether you want to accept it or not, we got your back. And don’t feel awful about saying what you did, it was all true.”

“Yeah, and if you want me to physically kick his ass, I’ll do it. We’re behind you 100%,” MJ echoed, before instantly switching tracks to the  _ distract-Peter  _ train. Peter loved her for it. “Anyways, wanna come over tonight? We can watch  _ Empire Strikes Back _ , again.” The word  _ ‘again’ _ came out as a grumble.

Peter laughed. “Let me go home and change so Queens doesn’t see Spider-Man sneaking in through a teenage girl’s window.”

“Text me when you’re on your way, okay?”

“Yeah. Ned, wanna be my guy in the chair ‘til I get home? You never know when a crane is gonna swing me into a building.”

“Ha ha, very funny, Peter. Stop crashing into buildings, please. I thought your spider tingle prevented that.”

\---

_ New text to:  _ scary girl

_ 7:32 PM _

_ Harley:  _ Ive been trying to call peter for an hour, is he okay?

_ Harley:  _ i just want to apologize, I fucked up so bad

_ Harley:  _ please just let me know if hes safe

  
  


_ Text from:  _ scary girl

_ 9:44 PM _

_ scary girl:  _ Peter’s fine, no thanks to you. You better have a good fucking apology, Keener. 

_ Harley:  _ i know, i know, and i feel so awful about it. I just want to apologize to him

_ scary girl: _ The only reason I’m not going to Stark Tower right now to beat your ass is because I’m fairly sure Stark already handed it to you. Peter didn’t even tell Ned or me about Spider-Man, Ned found out on accident and I found out on my own. He doesn’t not trust you because he didn’t tell you, okay? He’s just very used to hiding it.

_ Harley:  _ I know. And even if it wasn’t a serious matter, he had every right not to tell me. I just let my emotions get the better of me and im so sorry. I should have just let it go but my stupid ass was unreasonable and horrible to peter

_ scary girl:  _ At least you know it. Peter is going to forgive you way too easily for this but I won’t, you hear me? You’re on thin fucking ice. 

_ Harley:  _ I know.

\---

**_June 4, 2017_ **

Peter didn’t return to the tower the next day. His heart ached to go back, to pick up the phone when Harley called him or return his calls — because, yes,  _ of course _ Harley had called him, at least seven times last night. He’d eventually gotten the message, realized Peter wanted to be left alone for the time being, and sent a quick  _ ‘I’m really sorry I was such a jerk. I understand if you don’t want to talk to me for a while, but I do want to apologize in person, because you deserve that.’ _ text. Peter hadn’t responded, but in a way he was glad that Harley hadn’t forced a full paragraph text apology on him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to read it rather than hear it. 

As bad as Peter wanted to go back, to see Harley again, to forgive and forget… he didn’t. Part of him wanted to rationalize it as shame over yelling at him. Because he did feel ashamed about that — Peter Parker wasn’t an angry person, and it gnawed at him to know that he’d gotten so worked up.

But the other part of him was, truth be told,  _ hurt _ . After  _ Empire Strikes Back  _ had ended, he’d spent the long journey back home mulling over what MJ and Ned and Mr. Stark had said. And they were right — it  _ wasn’t  _ his fault that Harley had gotten angry. Harley  _ wasn’t _ entitled to knowing about Spider-Man. 

_ I don’t owe you my whole life story and I certainly didn’t owe you this information. _

As much guilt as the words he’d said brought, they were  _ true _ . He didn’t owe Harley anything, no more than Harley owed him anything. And when he’d gotten back home and broken down in front of May, telling her the whole story, she’d only confirmed that.

“Honey, you didn’t have to tell Harley. I know you wanted to, but like you said — being Spider-Man is something you have to be really careful about,” she’d said, gently carding her hands through his hair like she always used to do when he was upset. “You’re right, you didn’t owe him anything. But it seems from his text and calls that he knows that already.”

“I know.”

She’d given him a warm smile, brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I believe Harley’s a good kid. I believe he didn’t want to hurt you, just how you didn’t want to hurt him.”

“Yeah, I know —”

May had cut him off. “But you’re allowed to feel hurt, Peter. You’re allowed to not want to forgive him straight off the bat.”

And for some reason, despite the fact that he’d heard it from MJ, from Ned, from Tony Stark himself already, hearing it from Aunt May was what really had solidified it. 

(Even if he’d, for the most part, already forgiven Harley.) 

At least now he could forgive himself, too.

So instead of going back to the tower the next day, Peter spent most of his Sunday swinging around New York City, the rushes of adrenaline that came from being Spider-Man clearing his head. And  _ god _ did it feel good.

MJ had, as she promised, chewed Harley out (via text, of course). Peter knew from the get-go that she was going to hold onto this for a long time, even if he’d already forgiven Harley. Ned had let it go, reluctantly at first. But Peter knew his best friend wasn’t the type to hold grudges.

Spider-Man was all over Twitter once again, despite the fact that the lack of posting on Peter’s end had killed the #spideyparker hashtag a little bit.

He got a call from Aunt May late in the afternoon. 

“Hey Aunt May, what’s up?”

“Hi, Peter. I hope you didn’t answer my call in midair.”

He had. “Uh, nope. Sitting on top of a building right now.”

Aunt May laughed. “You’re a terrible liar. Now stick onto a skyscraper or something so I can actually talk to you.” Once he had, she continued. “Tony wants to take you to the compound this week. He was smart enough to ask my permission first, for once. My guess is you’ll want to go?”

Giddiness washed away the anxiety of the last day, and for a moment, Peter forgot all about Harley. He was going to train with the Avengers _ ,  _ for  _ real,  _ for the first time. “Oh, man, that’s  _ awesome _ . Yes, yes! Can I go, Aunt May? Did he say when?”

“Sure, Peter. Probably the safest place you can be, surrounded by the Avengers,” she replied with an edge of sarcasm. “I think Stark was planning on stealing you on Monday, taking you upstate for just a few days. I think actual training will be great.”

“Hey! I’ve managed just fine without ‘training’, so far!”

Aunt May huffed. “I’m not even going to  _ try  _ and bring up the various times you could have died. Besides, didn’t the UN official people say you need to train or you’re out?”

“That may or may not have been a major point of the new Accords, yeah.” Peter tilted his head, inspecting the taxi-cab-infested streets below. How long had he been out as Spider-Man today? 

“I’ll tell Tony he can steal you for a few days, then. We’ll talk more when you get home, okay?”

“Thanks a ton, Aunt May! Love you!”

“Love you too, Peter.”

He whooped as he swung off the building, not caring about the several New Yorkers below with their cameras pointed up at him. Let them capture the happiness. 

\---

Bider-Man ✓ @SpiderManOfficial

Excited to announce I’ll be heading out to the Avengers compound to start formally training with them this week! Don’t get into too much trouble without me, NYC <3 [winky emoji] [rainbow]

\---

**_June 5, 2017_ **

Peter swung in through his window on Stark Tower, backpack slung over his shoulder and trepidation a pit in his stomach. Not because he was leaving to spend three days training with the Avengers, although he’d barely gotten a wink of sleep last night just thinking about that.

He wasn’t sure why exactly he was still avoiding Harley — to be honest, he’d just had such a great day yesterday, swinging around on patrol and forgetting about the situation, that the reminder that they still hadn’t talked about what had happened now sat like lead in his stomach. And it was  _ his  _ fault they hadn’t talked yet. Harley had reached out to him, tried to get in contact, only to be given the cold shoulder by Peter at every turn and, if Peter knew MJ well enough, cold words from her as well.

He hadn’t come to the tower to talk to Harley. He’d only returned because they were taking the quinjet to the compound, and it couldn’t very well blast off from Peter’s apartment in Queens. But now that he was here, he realized the anxiety gnawing at his innards wouldn’t go away if he just up and left without at least talking to Harley. He’d be totally incapable of focusing on training with the Avengers.

So he ripped his mask off, not bothering with the rest of the suit, and left the room, heart in his throat.

Harley wasn’t hard to find. He was in Mr. Stark’s lab — not Peter’s. Oddly enough, Tony himself wasn’t there. When Peter entered, Harley didn’t notice, his back to him. He had his head bent over what looked like an old and well-used Iron Man gauntlet, scraggly blond hair pushed out of the way and flannel sleeves, as always, rolled up to his elbows. Peter took a second to listen to Harley’s heartbeat, that easy rhythm he’d gotten so used to so quickly.  _ Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.  _

_ Now or never, Peter.  _

“Hey, Harley.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a few notes. 
> 
> Sorry for that cliffy, especially after I’ve been AWOL for like 2 months and there was a cliffhanger on the last chapter too. Life has been a bit much, but I just finished with final exams and will be writing pretty solidly for the next month! 
> 
> I had so much planned out for this chapter and ended up tackling less than a third of it, and I rewrote plenty of it several times because I really did not like it. I still am not happy with it; the characters and their interactions are super out of character, a lot of the dialogue doesn’t feel like it flows, and overall it’s kinda just a mess.
> 
> All of that being said, thank you all for sticking around and being patient and giving this story so much love. 8L9L is on the brink of 100k words, which is INSANE. Whether you’ve been reading since I posted the very first chapter or you just started today and binged all of it, thank you for reading! Hoping everyone is safe and healthy.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn’t very well leave the last chapter hanging for long, could I? This one got long again and therefore got split again but this should fully be over by the next chapter!

**_June 4, 2017_ **

Peter hadn’t responded to his text or his calls. Harley figured it was probably best to give him space and let him come back to him. He didn’t want to pursue Peter to apologize and possibly make him feel worse. And he didn’t blame him for wanting to stay away, either.

He sent a quick text to MJ, just to see if Peter was safe (though he was sure Tony would know if he wasn’t). 

_New text to:_ scary girl

_7:32 PM_

_Harley:_ Ive been trying to call peter for an hour, is he okay?

 _Harley:_ i just want to apologize, I fucked up so bad

 _Harley:_ please just let me know if hes safe

She didn’t respond for several minutes, which stretched into a half hour and then an hour. Given MJ’s normal quick response time, Harley figured she was probably ignoring him right now. 

Fucking fantastic. 

Of course, he’d known that if he alienated Peter in any way, he’d no longer be friends with MJ and Ned anymore either. They were _Peter’s_ friends, first and foremost, not his. He’d barely known them for a week, during which he’d completely imposed himself on their friendship.

Harley tried to lock himself in the lab and get some work done — Tony’s lab, not Peter’s, he felt odd and intrusive being in there all by himself given the circumstances — but his mind wandered to no end. He ended up scrolling through Twitter, but that didn’t keep his mind from wandering either. By the time he looked up, pulled out of his thoughts, the sun had fully set below the horizon and New York City was lit up completely against the dark backdrop of the night sky.

He sat, watching the city lights below from Tony’s lab, and ignored the tears forming in his eyes. Harley pulled out his phone and dialed.

He waited with a knot in his throat and tears in his eyes, but they both felt insignificant once she picked up. “Hi, Harls!”

“Hi, Ma.”

As hard as he tried to hide it, she picked up the sound of oncoming tears in his voice. “Harley, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“God, ma, I really, really messed up with Peter, and it’s all my fault, and — and I just want to apologize but I dunno if he’ll ever wanna talk to me again, and —”

“Harley,” she cut him off, “what happened, honey?”

And he had no real way of answering that, now did he? He couldn’t just up and out Peter’s secret identity to his mother, no matter how upset he was. It wasn’t his place — especially not after what had happened today.

“I just… I can’t really explain, but I got into a fight with him about Spider-Man, and I was just… God, ma, I was so stupid about it, and I don’t think he’ll ever want to talk to me again. And it’s all my fault.” Well… he’d told the truth, if only snippets of it.

She sighed through the phone. “Harley, these fights happen with friends. And when it’s your fault, the best you can do is apologize and hope for forgiveness. If I know my son, I know you’re blaming yourself for everything that happened. Don’t beat yourself up too much, okay, sweetheart?” His mother paused for a second. “‘Sides, I get the feeling that ain’t nothin’ I can say to you that Tony hasn’t already said, hmm?”

As always, she was right. He laughed thickly. “Yeah. I s’pose.”

“Do you want to come home?”

“No! No, I mean, I miss you and Abbs, but — I so love it here, and I gotta make it up to Peter and his friends, I can’t just up and leave —”

He knew, from her voice through the phone, that she was smiling. “I know you like this Peter guy, and you’re going to make it right. You’re a kid, Harls, you make mistakes. But you’re a good kid, and I’m sure Peter knows it too. I love you, okay? Now, tell me more ‘bout New York.”

He laughed again. Thank god for his mother, who never dug and knew when to stop asking questions. Who always knew the right thing to say. Who was willing to forgive him and love him straight off the bat, without knowing the full story, even when he knew he didn’t deserve it. Harley wiped the tears from his eyes and told her about New York City.

\---

_Text from:_ scary girl

_9:44 PM_

_scary girl:_ Peter’s fine, no thanks to you. You better have a good fucking apology, Keener. 

Harley responded instantly.

_Harley:_ i know, i know, and i feel so awful about it. I just want to apologize to him

 _scary girl:_ The only reason I’m not going to Stark Tower right now to beat your ass is because I’m fairly sure Stark already handed it to you. Peter didn’t even tell Ned or me about Spider-Man, Ned found out on accident and I found out on my own. He doesn’t not trust you because he didn’t tell you, okay? He’s just very used to hiding it.

 _Harley:_ I know. And even if it wasn’t a serious matter, he had every right not to tell me. I just let my emotions get the better of me and im so sorry. I should have just let it go but my stupid ass was unreasonable and horrible to peter

 _scary girl:_ At least you know it. Peter is going to forgive you way too easily for this but I won’t, you hear me? You’re on thin fucking ice. 

_Harley:_ I know.

\---

Harley didn’t get much sleep that night. Despite his mother’s kindness, his stomach turned at every thought of how he’d treated Peter. He replayed what had happened over and over and over in his head, eyes teared up and face burning with shame despite the fact that there was no one around. And the idea that he had fucked up the _one_ friendship he’d ever had, the fact that he had no clue if he’d ever get a friend again…

 _Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You brought this_.

So he tried not to cry and sent a prayer to anyone or anything out there listening that Peter was okay.

\---

**_June 5, 2017_ **

Harley tried not to mope the next day. Peter still wasn’t responding to him, wasn’t calling him back, and after the brief conversation with MJ last night, neither was she or Ned. Tony had been in the kitchen earlier when he woke up (‘woke up’ was a poor way to put it, considering the fact that he hadn’t really fallen asleep all night), but instead of the harsh look/talk that Harley had expected from him, he’d clapped him gently on the shoulder and given him a small smile that almost seemed to say, _that’s life, kid_.

He left for work soon after. They didn’t exchange many words, but Harley got the feeling that at the very least, Tony wasn’t angry at him. He wanted him and Peter to make up as much as Harley did.

Pepper had found him later, when he’d gone down to the lab — Tony’s, again — to try and focus and do _something_ productive. Harley was pointedly ignoring his phone, which had been buzzing with Twitter notifications all day. He’d pick it up if there was a text or call, but so far, there hadn’t been any. 

He’d mostly been expecting that, but a part of him had hoped that he and Peter could make up today, that Peter might come by the tower and they could talk.

So when he’d heard footsteps behind him, he’d turned around excited, only to find Pepper there, wearing a business suit. She sat down next to him and gave him a small smile. “Tony told me.”

“I feel terrible.”

“I know.” She was silent, waiting for him to speak. 

Harley did. “Tony thinks I should get him flowers and chocolate and strawberries.”

Pepper rolled her eyes and pushed her hair back. “Of course he does. Tony believes buying material things is the best way to appease someone. But you know Peter. Would he want that?”

“Probably not,” he said, chewing his lip. “I don’t really know what to say. Everything sounds so stupid in my head.”

“Harley, you obviously care about Peter and you obviously feel bad about what you did. You don’t need to plan your apology down to the word. Let it be natural. It’ll be genuine because you _are_ sorry.”

He looked at her. Pepper’s blue eyes were warm and seemingly judgement-free. “You think so?”

“Yeah. Just… give him time and space if he needs it first.”

\---  
  


After the talk with Pepper, Harley’s spirits had lifted somewhat. He shut off Twitter notifications entirely and got to work, and for a few hours, he was productive. His mind never wandered far from Peter, but the work he was getting to do with the Iron Man nanoparts was enough to keep him occupied. Tony had left him with a bunch of weird blueprints and notebooks filled with illegible writing about nanoparticles this morning before leaving for the supposed million meetings he had today.

Harley hadn’t realized how much time had passed, that it was well into the afternoon already and the sun was on the opposite side of the sky. He grabbed a 5/16 wrench and went to fasten one of the bolts in the gauntlet — it had been fidgeting all day, disassembling into nanoparticles when he went to fasten it, but after a lot of work he’d managed to make it stay in one piece. He was working on it using an old gauntlet that wasn’t used anymore, just so that he could get this one bolt right without the rest of the gauntlet scattering into particles. Harley slowly screwed the bolt into the gauntlet, right under where the thumb would go. _C’mon, just a few more turns_ —

“Hey, Harley.”

He practically jumped out of his skin, heart rate rocketing.

 _Aw, come on, I was almost there_ — _!_

_Peter._

Harley whirled around, 5/16 inch wrench in hand, only to come face to face with the one person he’d been wanting to talk to all day. Peter was wearing his Spider-Man suit ( _don’t stare, Jesus, Harley)_ save the mask, which was clutched in one hand. For some reason, seeing him again in the suit was weird, despite that Harley _knew_ he was Spider-Man now. Peter had a pack slung over his shoulder.

_Is he… going somewhere?_

Harley dropped his eyes. He was a good several inches taller than Peter, sure, but in that moment he’d never felt smaller. “Hi. Uh, hi, Peter.”

Peter cut him off before he could say anything else. “Can we — can we talk?”

Harley looked up, expecting to see the anger or disappointment or hatred in Peter’s eyes, but he was, for once, unreadable. “Yeah.”

Peter sat himself on the lab table next to the gauntlet Harley had been working on all afternoon while Harley plopped himself back in his chair. He dropped his eyes again, before bringing them back up. He had to look him in the eyes for this — Peter deserved that much. “Peter, I’m so sorry.” Peter bit his lip, but Harley continued. “I was a total asshole, demanding stuff from you that you had no reason to tell me. Telling me that you were Spider-Man was your choice, your decision, and… I’m sorry I took that away from you too, by finding out that morning in the lab. I’m so, so sorry. You had every right not to tell me, and I was — I was selfish, and cruel, and stupid to ask why you hadn’t.”

Peter’s brows had furrowed, but the words that came out of his mouth next were completely unexpected. “I’m sorry, too.”

“What?” Harley asked, confused. 

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you, shouldn’t have guilt-tripped you about it with the ‘I almost died’ thing. I was totally unreasonable.”

Harley caught his eyes. “No, Peter. You were completely reasonable. You’re allowed to get angry and I gave you plenty of reason to.”

“I — I was angry. I don’t… usually get angry. But I was. And I was hurt. I know — I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. But it did kinda hurt that you thought I didn’t trust you.” He stopped and seemed to measure his next words carefully. “I meant what I said — it’s the one thing I have to be careful about. It’s not that I don’t trust you, I do, I really do; it’s just…” He looked at a loss for words.

Harley tried for a small smile. “Hey, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m really, really sorry about how I acted. And I promise I’ll never act like that again.”

“Okay.” Peter was quiet for a second, deliberating something. “You know MJ won’t let this go, right?”

“Yeah. And I’ll pay for it willingly. I deserve that. But you shouldn’t be sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have let my emotions get the better of me.”

“Neither should I. I’m sorry I hurt you. I never meant to.” Harley paused, wanting to reach out and touch him but not sure it would be welcome. “Would you… would you be willing to forgive me?”

Peter gave him a pained look. Harley thought, just for a second, that he would say _no_. But what he said instead was, “Yeah, Harley, I already did. Of course.”

Relief washed over him like a tidal wave and his throat suddenly unknotted itself, as did his stomach. Harley wasn’t sure he’d ever felt so relieved in his life. “Thank you, Peter. I’m not —”

Peter cut him off, seemingly reading his mind. “Don’t say you don’t deserve forgiveness or any of that, okay? You do. And I don’t want to stay angry at you.” 

It was quiet, save for the roaring in Harley’s ears. He shuffled his feet and decided to ask about the backpack. “What’s — what’s that for?”

Peter cocked his head. “Oh, you didn’t know? I put it on Twitter. I’m going to the compound for a few days, starting my training. Mr. Stark suggested it.”

Harley felt stupid as his heart sank. _Yeah, of course he’d want to leave right now._ Harley probably should have checked Twitter at some point earlier. “No, I didn’t. When will you be back?”

“Thursday.”

“Well, uh. Good luck! That’s super exciting!” He tried to give Peter a smile, but it faltered. He sighed. “I’m sorry, Peter. Again.”

Peter finally, _finally_ gave him a small smile. “Harls, I forgive you. I mean it — I’m not angry at you anymore.”

Harley didn’t want to jinx it, but better to clear the air entirely. “Are we okay, then?”

“Yeah, we’re good.” Peter blew out a long breath of air. “And I _am_ sorry I didn’t tell you right off the bat.”

“No, you had every right not to.”

A longer silence settled between them. Unlike usually, when their silences were comfortable, with neither feeling the need to fill it in, this one felt awkward. Maybe it was just Harley feeling awkward, despite the relief washing through his entire being.

A weird and completely senseless urge suddenly took hold of him. _Come on, tell him. Tell him you like him._

“Actually, Peter, I —” Peter turned to look at him. There was no escaping it now — not with that Bambi gaze giving him his full attention. Harley took a deep breath before starting again. “Peter, I —”

Which was the exact moment Anthony Edward _fucking_ Stark decided to walk into Peter’s lab. “Pete? We gotta go, kid!” he said before raising his eyes to look at them. Tony seemed to realize that he’d probably interrupted something.

Harley realized, at the same time, just how closely he and Peter had been standing. He took a half step backwards, hoping his cheeks weren’t burning. 

Peter didn’t seem to notice. He was watching Tony, whose eyes were flitting between the two of them. “Oh. Sorry, Mr. Stark! I’ve got everything right here, I’ll be out in a second.” Harley’s heart sank again, but he tried to ignore it. Peter was going to the compound for just a few days, and it wasn’t because of him. They’d just made up, right?

For once, Tony didn’t make any snarky comments on anything. Harley couldn’t read Tony’s face at all. “I’ll be… waiting out on the landing platform. If you wanna finish saying goodbye, or…”

He didn’t finish the sentence before he let himself out of the lab. 

Peter let out an awkward chuckle. “Sorry, I do have to go. But I’m glad we talked. Really glad.” He stopped, biting his lip as he looked at Harley. ( _Can he get any cuter?)_ “What were you going to tell me, Harls?”

Harley knew for sure his cheeks were burning now. “It’s, ah, not important. It can wait ‘til you get back.”

“You sure?” The Bambi gaze was back.

“Y-yeah. Don’t worry about it, Peter. Send me pictures with the Avengers, okay?” Peter smiled again, this time more fully, and leaned in. For a split second, Harley panicked, not knowing what to do. _Is he going to kiss me?_

But no. Peter simply encircled his arms around Harley and gave him a quick hug. Harley was so shell-shocked that he barely had time to realize what was going on and reach his hands up to hug Peter back before Peter had drawn back. 

“See you Thursday, then!” And he leapt out of the lab at full spider-speed. 

_He hugged me._

_Oh, fuck off, Keener. It was barely a hug._

The smile dropped from his face quickly. _Will you ever be able to tell him how you feel? You can’t just text him something like that when he’s at the compound. He’s got enough going on already._

_Thursday. Just three days._

\---

_Text from: scary girl_

_6:12 PM_

_Harley:_ I dont think I deserved to get let off the hook like that, for the record

 _scary girl:_ Neither do I.

 _scary girl:_ But it’s Peter. He forgives easy. Don’t take advantage of that, you hear me?

 _Harley:_ I dont ever want to have to be forgiven again bc I dont want to ever mess up like this again. 

_scary girl:_ Good.

_\---_

  
  


_New group chat: Harley, scary girl, Nedward_

_9:34 PM_

_Harley:_ can yall facetime?

\---

**_June 6, 2017_ **

Peter had arrived at the compound yesterday evening and made a point to ignore all the reporters and journalists and press that had swarmed to the compound. (Okay, so maybe it was a little stupid of him to advertise on Twitter that he’d be at the compound this week.) Nonetheless, they’d successfully been kept out by the security team and given that the compound windows were all one way mirrors, Peter doubted anyone would be discovering his identity this week.

He was a little too exhausted from spending all day swinging around on patrol and then talking to Harley to get in any training yesterday. Today, though, Natasha had him out of bed at what felt like the ass crack of dawn (but was more likely 7 am).

Peter was glad he’d followed his gut and gone to find Harley yesterday. Having talked with him, seeing how genuinely upset Harley had been with himself, it was easy to forgive him. He knew MJ didn’t want him to forgive so quickly, but it had only felt natural. He wasn’t angry at Harley anymore. He’d been ready to forgive him. And although Peter felt kind of bad he’d had to leap out and head to the compound right after, talking and making up was all worth the blush and smile on Harley’s face.

And that hug. Peter had just leaned in and hugged him, naturally — _that’s what friends do after a fight, right?_ — only for Harley to stiffen up and freeze. 

Natasha clocked him right in the face again, breaking him out of his thoughts for what was likely the billionth time just this morning.

“Thinking about something, little spider?” she asked, the edges of her lips curling up. “Or some _one_?”

Peter ducked from her next fist without realizing she’d even punched and rolled away instinctively, letting his sixth sense take over. He caught her foot and spun her away before jumping over her and kicking her in the back of the knee. She fell to the ground, but was up again instantly.

Peter studied her as she and him slowly circled each other, fists up. Her natural red hair had started growing back in, replacing the stark platinum blond that she’d had while in hiding after everything with the Accords. It didn’t look like it’d grown a lot — just a blossom of bright red at the roots — but it was long enough that she’d put it back in a ponytail. Natasha’s eyes seemed to change with the light; green one moment, hazel or grey the next. She studied him warily, eyeing him up and down. 

“Well? You still haven’t answered my question, kiddo.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Yes, I am, but —”

He was cut off as she lunged, feinting left and then attacking right, taking him down with a well-placed kick to his ribs. The breath whooshed out of Peter, but he flipped and landed on his feet. Natasha was on him instantly, throwing punches and kicks that looked on the outside to be randomized. Peter recognized the pattern and caught her fist as it headed towards his face again.

“ _Nice_. Good, Peter.”

He didn’t know how long they were at it, but by the time Natasha had him on the ground ( _again_ ), bare foot planted firmly on his chest, the sweat was dripping from his face into his eyes. She reached out an arm and helped him up.

“I think that’s good for today, don’t you?” She gave him a wary look, hazel eyes glinting. “You’re pulling your punches, Peter.”

Peter grunted. “Well, I don’t want to _hurt_ you, Ms. Ro—” He cut himself off. “Nat.”

“I’ve taken a full Winter Soldier-mode Barnes and Steve and a _lot_ worse. I’ll be fine, Mr. Parker,” she said sarcastically. Upon seeing his face, though, she softened. “You can’t hold back against some enemies, you know? And I don’t want you to get hurt because you’re not using your full strength.”

He swallowed. “Yeah, okay.”

Natasha reached up and ruffled his hair, as sweaty and gross as it was. “Alright. Now, who _were_ you thinking about, hmm? Wouldn’t happen to be Harley?”

Peter was so hot and sweaty that he doubted she could tell the difference when he blushed. “Maybe. Well, at least now he knows about Spider-Man. Could’ve been worse.”

“Sounds like it didn’t really go over the way you were hoping, huh?” Peter was getting used to Natasha reading him like an open book — after all, she had been a spy. But the ease with which she knew what was going on was freaky.

He sighed. “Yeah, we had a fight. It’s fine, though. We made up about it before I came here.”

She ruffled his hair again. “Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! It is. I just wish I hadn’t rushed out to come here as soon as we talked.” At the look on her face, Peter scrambled. “No, no, I didn’t mean — I love it here, it’s great, I’m super excited to be training with the team and you and —”

Natasha’s laugh cut him off. “Peter, it’s okay. You’ll get back to him soon enough, won’t you?”

He nodded. “How do you know everything? Oh, wait, Russian spy.”

“Tch. Кот наплакал,” she said, in what Peter guessed was Russian. “Not everything. You’re surprisingly hard to read.”

“Hey, how d’you say spider in Russian?” 

Nat gave him a look that said she very clearly knew he was trying to change the subject. “Go ask Barnes. Besides —”

“I don’t think his time as the Winter Soldier means he knows Russian, Nat.”

It was her turn to roll her eyes. “He definitely does. At least partially. But fine. _Pauk_.” She said it almost like it had two syllables — pa-uk.

“ _Pauk._ Okay, and Spider-Man?”

“Literal translation would be _muzhchina pauk._ But almost anyone would say _chelovek-pauk_ instead _._ Hold on,” she said as he opened his mouth to ask something else, “lemme guess, you’re gonna ask about Black Widow next?”

“Pffft,” he scoffed. “No, I know that one. _Chernaya vdova,_ right?”

Her eyebrows raised. “Ahh, I see someone’s been using Google translate. But you’re pronouncing it wrong — _chornaya_ , not _chernaya_. For some reason, Google translate doesn’t know about the umlaut.”

“Isn’t the umlaut German?”

She laughed. “Probably. Now, go get something to eat, it’s almost noon. I’m sure Tony wants to talk to you.”

Peter gave her a bewildered look. “We’ve been drilling for four hours?”

“More like five,” she said, laughing. “Go on, I’m sure he wants to do some _actual_ spider training with you later.”

“Yeah, but we’re the spider team. You and me.”

She nodded and laughed. “Yeah, you ‘n me, kiddo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer that my Russian is veeeery rusty. I’ll be back soon :) Happy holidays!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

**_June 8, 2017_ **

The days at the compound passed far too quickly. After drilling with Nat, Peter found himself doing team drills — in the Spider-Man suit — with Rhodey, Mr. Stark, and, to his surprise, Wanda. Having been thrown by her red magic before (whatever it was, he had no clue; it defied all the laws of physics even worse than Steve’s shield), he could tell she was holding back during practice. Luckily, she was a lot more open to conversation than she had been back in Switzerland, and even started throwing snarky remarks back at Peter while they fought. 

(“Good luck with that —”

_ Thwip! _

“HA! Got you, have fun cleaning off the webs —”

But for some reason, Wanda’s red magic made his webs slip off easily, and she’d already thrown another red magic ball — fireball? — at him.

“You’re dead, Spidey.”)

A random man Peter had never seen before was sitting in the corner of the room watching them throughout the whole practice, legs crossed and in a business casual outfit. It was only later, after Mr. Stark called off the drills (probably, he thought, because Captain America had walked into the room with Sam Wilson), that the man stood up and walked over to them. Wanda, warily watching Peter as if he was going to shoot more webs at her if she turned around, called out, “Hey, Vis, do you want to go for a walk?”

“Wait, that’s — Mr. Vision?”

The man  _ looked  _ fully human. Upon a closer look, though, it became very clear to Peter that he shared the same face as the superbot. He phased part of his face back to its signature cybernetic red. “Hello, Peter.”

Peter finally ripped off his mask, which he’d been keeping on in case it was some random reporter who had gotten inside. “Whoa. I didn’t know you could do that!”

“It is new. I have been conducting several experiments to understand the full breadth of my powers,” Vision said, phasing back into a normal-looking human. “Your friend, Princess Shuri of Wakanda, suggested it.”

“That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, you look very human, but we have to work on your speech,” said Wanda playfully, smiling at the bot. “Want to come on a walk, Spidey? You can teach Vision some slang.”

After that, Peter had taken walks with Wanda and Vision around the compound whenever he wasn’t training. They were, technically speaking, the youngest three Avengers there anyway, and it was nice to talk to people closer to his age (although technically Vision knew basically everything despite being just a few years old. Perks of being a robot).

Peter trained with Natasha in the mornings, and a portion of the team led by Mr. Stark in the afternoons. The second day, Nick Fury had appeared at the front door of the compound, one eye glaring at everyone until it landed on Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark had been furious, and though Peter hadn’t exactly heard the exchange between the two (Natasha and Wanda had dragged him off), Fury left pretty soon after that and didn’t show back up.

The only people Peter hadn’t gotten to really train with were Steve and Sergeant Barnes, the latter of whom was a ghost in the compound. Steve had been around for meals, and Peter had seen him taking runs throughout the morning with Sam Wilson, but they didn’t interact much. That wasn’t to say Captain America wasn’t cold towards him; he shot him a ‘Hey Peter’ every time they passed each other and gave him smiles, but the conversation was lacking a bit. Peter got the feeling Steve was treading lightly around him, but he had no idea why.

He’d barely seen the Winter Soldier around whatsoever, just in the gym in the early mornings and sometimes late at night if he went down after dinner to burn off whatever remaining energy he had. For the most part, though, drilling with the team was so exhausting that Peter would fall asleep after calling Aunt May after dinner.

He hadn’t had the chance to see or call MJ or Ned at all, but he’d texted them the whole time he was at the compound. MJ had, at her request, taken over his Spidey Twitter and kept busy posting the pictures Peter sent the group chat. 

The group chat with Harley had been dead for some time now, but on Thursday morning, Peter woke up at dawn for his training with Natasha to find that he’d missed a whole conversation last night.

_ Group chat: yeehaw boi time _

_ Yesterday _

_ 11:52 PM _

_ nedward:  _ [modified cowboy emoji meme.jpg]

_ nedward:  _ look its you

_ yeehaw man:  _ im offended

_ yeehaw man:  _ i look a lot gayer than that

_ MJ:  _ [cowboy meme rainbow edition.jpg]

_ MJ:  _ This up to your standards?

_ yeehaw man:  _ perfect

_ MJ:  _ [eyeroll.emoji]

_ nedward:  _ beterrrr

_ nedward:  _ come backkkk

_ nedward:  _ i can only take so much of mj and yeehaw boy killing each other on wii

_ MJ:  _ He’s probably asleep.

_ MJ:  _ Excuse me, I’M the one killing people on Wii. No one kills me.

_ nedward:  _ [sweating.emoji]

_ Today _

_ 12:01 AM _

_ nedward:  _ yes ofc thats what I meant

_ yeehaw man:  _ mmmmhmmmmm your mario kart scores beg to differ maam

_ MJ:  _ >:-(

_ yeehaw man:  _ ....

_ nedward:  _ harley run for it

_ nedward:  _ shes gonna kill u

_ MJ:  _ Nonsense. I was just planning on pulling your limbs from their sockets, starting with the phalanges.

_ yeehaw man:  _ tf is a phalange

_ nedward:  _ RUN

_ yeehaw man:  _ Harley Keener has exited the chat

_ MJ:  _ I’m sure F.R.I.D.A.Y. could help you sort out what a phalange is.

_ yeehaw man:  _ Harley Keener has reentered the chat

_ yeehaw man:  _ my confusion is utmost

_ yeehaw man:  _ google says ‘plural of Roman phalanx’

_ nedward:  _ no dude the BONES

_ MJ:  _ :-)

_ nedward:  _ the nose unsettles me mj

_ MJ:  _ Of course, why else do you think I do it?

_ yeehaw man:  _ FINGERS???

_ MJ:  _ Oh, he’s back.

_ yeehaw man:  _ Harley has exited the chat

_ MJ:  _ >:-D

_ nedward:  _ [fearful.emoji]

_ nedward:  _ Ned has exited the chat

_ MJ:  _ Enjoy reading this at the crack of dawn, Peter.

_ MJ:  _ Oh, what the hell.

_ MJ:  _ MJ has exited the chat.

Peter laughed and texted a quick reply.

_ 6:50 AM _

_ BETER:  _ yes that was v fun to read lmao

_ BETER:  _ wait til i get back and cream ALL of u on mario kart

When or how Harley had made up with Ned and MJ, he wasn’t sure. He was just very glad it had happened, and he smiled all the way down to the gym. Nat raised an eyebrow at his gleeful expression but said nothing, and then proceeded to punch and kick the living shit out of him for the next two hours.

\---

He left the compound with Happy and Mr. Stark on the Quinjet after lunch. Wanda and Natasha had been sad to see him go, but he’d promised he would be back soon. The short flight back to Stark Tower was spent in an odd sort of anticipation; he’d made up with Harley, sure, but then he’d left on weird terms and then Harley had made up with MJ and Ned sometime while he was gone and he had no idea what the dynamic would be like when he got back.

“Good job this week, kid,” Mr. Stark said from the seat across from him. F.R.I.D.A.Y., as always, was driving the jet, and Peter was watching New York pass by beneath them. 

“Thanks, Mr. Stark. I had a really good time,” he said truthfully. “What was up with Mr. Fury, though?”

Mr. Stark passed a hand through his hair tiredly. “Nothing good, as always,” he grumbled. “Nothing for you to worry about, though. I’m glad you’re getting along with Vision and Wanda.”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “When can we go back?”

“Ask your aunt. But you’re free to go back anytime you want to. You say the word.”

Peter beamed. Starting training with the Avengers had been amazing, and he really couldn’t wait to work more with them. As a  _ team _ . God, he was part of an elite superhero team. How had he ended up here?

He must’ve been making a face, because Mr. Stark leaned forward and patted him on the knee. “You’re doing great, Pete. Don’t worry about it.”

When they arrived, they were greeted on the landing platform by Pepper. “MJ and Ned are inside,” she told Peter. “With Harley.”

“Really?”

Pepper raised her eyebrows as if to say,  _ I don’t know either.  _ “They’ve been playing on the Wii since yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah, they told me about that. I’ll just —” He looked at Mr. Stark for permission. 

The man nodded his head in the direction of the Tower with a wink. “Go for it, kid. I’ll tell your aunt where you are.”

\---

Harley had decided to hold off on telling Peter how he felt. He should wait until they were a bit further past the fight they’d had, right? He didn’t want to fuck everything up again right after they’d just reconciled and then not seen each other for a few days. So he threw the idea to the back of his mind, determined to get Peter back into his best graces before he went and threw something so heavy like that out there.

On another side of things, Harley was eternally relieved and grateful that MJ and Ned were willing to give him a second chance. Ned had gone back to normal pretty quickly. MJ was a little frosty, but she hadn’t turned down his invitation to play Wii at the Tower. And  _ maybe  _ he’d let her win easy. 

(Probably not, though. MJ was kind of a beast at MarioKart.)

She’d melted a bit more after yesterday, and was back to her usual self (for the most part, anyway). This had been in large part due to the fact that she’d accidentally (and in a very non-MJ way) spilled that she  _ may  _ be thinking about asking out the princess of Wakanda.

“No way,” Ned had breathed.

“You’re serious?” Harley had asked, eyes wide. She’d turned, getting a bit defensive, until Harley said, “No, that’s awesome. Peter told me a bit about her, but I had no idea about you and…”

Ned had interrupted. “How’re you doing it, MJ?”

“I have no idea. How does one ask out a  _ princess _ ?” She gesticulated wildly. It was the first time Harley had ever seen her flustered.

Harley and Ned had put their heads together and come up with a few not-so-bad ideas, and MJ had been decidedly less cold towards him after that.

They’d been playing Wii all afternoon now, alternating between Just Dance and Mario Kart and a few other games, but now they were on MarioKart, playing what must’ve been the sixteenth round of races that day. Harley was so engrossed in getting the shortcut in Maple Treeway right that he didn’t notice when Peter walked in the room.

“Hey, guys!”

MJ paused the game, which left Harley half in-shock. MJ  _ never  _ paused Mario Kart. “Peter!” 

“Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, laughing. MJ tugged him down to the couch anyway, sandwiched between her and Harley. Harley instantly became very aware of every inch where his side touched Peter’s. His ears grew hot.

“How’d it go?” Ned asked from the other side of the couch, eyes wide.

“I think I have permanent bruises from Nat.”

“I don’t think you can have permanent bruises with your spidey healing, Peter,” said MJ, rolling her eyes and popping a chip from the table in her mouth.

“Still.” Peter glanced at Harley, and Harley tried to ignore how  _ close  _ they were. “Hey, Harley.”

“Hey.”

Peter glanced around. “Have you guys done  _ anything  _ but Mario Kart?”

“Of course we have!” said MJ.

“Yeah, like Just Dance and LEGO Harry Potter,” added Harley. MJ threw a pillow at him while Peter laughed. The sound made Harley’s heart feel full.

“Well, I mean, we did make plans for how to ask Shuri out…” MJ said tentatively after the laughter subsided.

Peter’s eyes widened. “You told them?”

“Well, a certain spider boy wasn’t helping me figure out how to ask her out so I had to resort to other methods.” But she was smiling even as she said it.

“You gotta tell me all about it later then,” said Peter. “I just wanna talk to Harley for a second, do you mind?”

Harley’s heart instantly pounded, and then raced even faster as he remembered that Peter could hear it. “Uh, sure.”

Peter got up and pulled Harley out of the living room, leaving MJ to absolutely destroy Ned at Mario Kart. Harley’s frozen Kart hit a tree and stopped, and he absently realized he’d never get that stupid shortcut on Maple Treeway right. He forgot all about it, though, when Peter spoke.

“Hey, I’m glad you made up with them while I was gone. I’m sorry our argument put a wedge between you.”

Harley shrugged it off. “I’m the one at fault, Peter. And besides, I’m the imposter here — some random Tennessee boy who came into y’all’s friend group and messed up the dynamic.” He smiled as he said it, but he knew it looked strained. The idea that he was the fourth wheel to Peter, Ned and MJ had plagued him for a long time.

Peter gave him a small smile. “Don’t say that. You’re not an imposter. I know MJ can be a little closed off, but… you’re one of us now, Harls.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, of course.” The look on Peter’s face was so sincere that for a moment, Harley thought about the words he’d decided to hold off on saying to Peter — those words that were so difficult to get out.

_ I’m maybe sort of in love with you. _

But Peter had continued before Harley could collect his thoughts, much less open his mouth. “You’re my friend, Harls.”

_ Oh.  _ His heart sank. 

Peter’s expression told Harley that he had clearly made a disappointed face. He schooled his features and put on a smile.

“I’m glad. You guys — I’m glad to have y’all as friends.”

Peter smiled again. “C’mon, let’s not leave poor Ned to face MJ’s fury for too long.” He turned around and headed back to the living room.

As soon as Peter’s back was turned, Harley felt tears well up. He furiously swiped them away and followed Peter back to the living room, trying to ignore the voice that whispered in the back of his mind, always preying on him in his weakest moments. 

_ This is why he kept up the façade that he was dating Spider-Man for so long. _

_ He doesn’t love you back. _

Well, at least he didn’t have to think anymore about when would be the right timing to tell Peter.

Bright sides, right?

_ \--- _

**_June 12, 2017_ **

It was MJ who pointed it out first, and Peter was left wondering how he’d been so stupid. 

For the past few days since Peter had got back, they’d determined it was way too hot outside to go on any more tours (not to mention the paparazzi were still fucking insane), so they’d mostly stayed inside, alternating between Stark Tower, and Ned, MJ, and Peter’s houses. This time, they were at Peter’s. 

The four of them — Harley, Ned, MJ and Peter — had been in Peter’s living room, MJ and Peter crammed together with their legs tangled on the old armchair that was definitely too small for the two of them. Peter scrolled through Twitter and MJ sat staring off into space instead of actually reading her book. Ned was spinning around in May’s office chair while Harley lay on the floor, cramming barbecue chips into his mouth a handful at a time. 

It had been quiet save the sound of New York City droning on outside. They’d been sitting in companionable silence for a while (thankfully, Peter thought, things had gone mostly back to normal over the last few days, the argument between him and Harley forgotten) when MJ spoke up. “Y’know, people are going to be expecting #spideyparker to be a thing at Pride this year.”

Harley sat up immediately, locking eyes with Peter.

“Aw, fuck,” said Peter quietly after a few moments. “Well, MJ, you’re the great planner. The schemer. What do we do?”

“You could just tell Twitter what you told me when I first got here,” Harley mused through a mouthful of chips, grinning at Peter.

Peter rolled his eyes, glad that the spideyparker thing wasn’t so much of a wedge between them now. “You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?”

“Nope.”

“That’s not a bad idea, actually,” said MJ, shrugging. Peter disentangled himself from her and got up, MJ letting out a sound of protest at the movement.

“Do y’all go to pride usually?” Harley asked, lying back down on the floor.

Ned interjected, watching as Peter climbed the wall and sat himself on the ceiling, upside-down. “I haven’t gone before. And I can’t go this year, cuz my family and I — we’re leaving to visit family out of state and won’t be here that weekend. But MJ, you went last year, right?”

She settled into the armchair, spreading out now that Peter was gone. “Yeah, but at the time it was just as an ally. Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck to do about sexuality most of the time now.”

“Fucking mood,” Peter agreed from the ceiling as Harley laughed. He locked eyes with Harley. “Nah, I wasn’t out as bi to Aunt May until last August, so I didn’t go last year either. And before that… well, I didn’t really have anyone to go with, I guess.” Peter reddened and pushed on. “But I told her I wanted to go this year.” He hoped Harley would think his cheeks were red because he was hanging upside down.

“Seems like we gotta figure out a solution to your conundrum, spider boy,” MJ said, “unless you want to publicly break up with yourself.”

“Ugh, I know. I will eventually, but… I don’t want to do it during pride month, you know? It’d crush half the fanbase.”

MJ snorted. They all sat in silence for a few more minutes, pondering. And then, Ned stood up from his chair, looking between Peter and Harley. “Ok, wait, hear me out. Harley dresses up as Spider-Man. You both go to Pride. Bam. Solved.”

Peter cocked his head. “That’s... actually not a bad idea.”

MJ snorted. “And it’s not like Harley will have a problem being touchy-feely with Peter.”

Peter coughed, looking away from Harley. His ears were red. “MJ!” he protested.

“As long as Peter is comfortable.” He winked up at Peter, and Peter wondered briefly if he was imagining it or if Harley’s face was  _ also  _ tinged with pink. 

Peter flipped him a bird, adjusting himself on the ceiling so that he was lying down — or up? — stretched out. MJ rolled her eyes. “You two idiots are so dramatic. For fuck’s sake.”

“And you’re stuck with me alllll summer long,” Harley said, sticking his tongue out in MJ’s direction. She rolled her eyes again.

\---

Bider-Man ✓ @SpiderManOfficial

Catch me @nycpride this weekend! With @peterwithab, of course ;)

\---

**_June 13, 2017_ **

“Holy shit, Parker. How do you move so... fluidly in this thing?”

Peter had to forcefully snap himself out of the daydream he was currently entertaining in which Harley Keener was Spider-Man and he actually  _ was  _ dating him. “Uh, I don’t know. You get used to it.”

Harley was pulling at the spandex suit. “It’s clinging in all the wrong places.”

“Trust me, it’s supposed to. You’ll get used to it soon. Maybe it’s a little small for you, though.”

Harley quirked an eyebrow. “Ya think? You’re a midget, Parker.”

“Am not. Five foot eight is not short.”

“I’m fairly sure it’s at  _ least  _ three inches shorter than the national average.” Harley smirked and walked up to Peter, stopping mere inches from him. Peter gulped. This close, he had to tilt his head up to meet Harley’s eyes.

“You’re a giant, that’s all.”

“Six feet is not a giant, Peter darlin’.”

Peter ignored the endearment, used to it. Harley had started throwing them into his sentences all the time again. 

Was it just Peter, or was he leaning in?

He was definitely leaning in. He was definitely looking at Peter’s lips. He was—

Peter jumped away, thankful for his Spidey sense as it warned him seconds before the door opened and Mr. Stark walked in. The rush of blood pumping through his ears was so loud that he couldn’t tell if Harley’s heart had been racing too.

“Am... am I supposed to know what’s going on here?” he asked, looking the two of them up and down with a mildly confused expression. “Is this some weird roleplay thing?”

Peter groaned as Harley laughed. “No, Mr. Stark, he’s just dressing up as Spider-Man for Pride. To keep up appearances, y’know?”

God, Peter hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt. He looked at his shoes, avoiding Mr. Stark’s eyes.

“Mmhm. To ‘keep up appearances’. Honestly, I gotta give it to ya, Pete. You put more commitment into this fake relationship than I did with all of my teenage romances.”

Harley scoffed. “Uh-huh, and how many of those did you have exactly, Tony? Are we counting Colonel Rhodes?” 

Tony pointed a warning finger at Harley. “Hey now. That’s no way to speak to your old man.”

Harley held his arms up in surrender.

“So, what’re you going to do if people ask you to do a flip, hmm? Or something, I don’t know, spidery.”

Harley hummed. “I hadn’t thought about that, actually. And we all know I’m not nearly as flexible as our dear Peter here.”

“I mean, you can just say something like, ‘back off, I’m just here to enjoy Pride’?” Peter said, grinning. “Or maybe you can say you’re saving up your energy for tomorrow because that’s when you’ll go full out.”

“Fair enough. How long am I supposed to be out there in spandex, anyway?” Harley turned in the mirror, inspecting himself and reaching to pull at the suit.

“Maybe an hour, tops. There’s gonna be a crap ton of fans surrounding us and wanting to take pictures. We can go back in the afternoon as just us, if we want.”

“You might want to make some modifications to the mask, Pete,” Mr. Stark said, eyeing him. “You don’t want anyone reaching to pull it off.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah, good idea. I’ll work on it tomorrow in the lab. I’m turning Karen and most of the suit’s capabilities off, anyways.”

Harley turned to him with a pout. “Aw, what, don’t you trust —” He cut himself off before he could finish it, and Peter shuffled uncomfortably. Okay, so maybe not everything had gone back to normal quite yet. “You think I’ll hack Karen, hmm?” Harley amended.

Peter smiled, trying to dissipate the tension. “Oh, I doubt you’re  _ that  _ good.”

“Rude.”

Mr. Stark watched them with an amused smile, but whether he was aware of the tension that had cropped up Peter didn’t know. “I’ll leave you two to it. Any plans for this afternoon?”

Harley, who was in the middle of sliding on the mask, responded with a muffled voice. “I think we were gonna head to Coney Island after Pete did some Spider-Manning. God, Parker, how do you put this mask on??”

“Your head is just inflated. Gotta let some of that ego out.”

“Nah, I’ve just got a big brain.”

“Ok, you two have fun. Fri, keep an eye on them, will you?”

“Always, boss,” the AI responded as Tony left the room chuckling. Peter walked over to Harley, who was still struggling with getting the mask over his nose.

“Hey, quit struggling, cowboy,” he said as he raised his hands to help. Harley dropped his hands almost immediately. Peter was overly aware of how quiet it got as he gently rolled the mask down Harley’s face, trying his best to ignore the brush between his fingers and Harley’s skin. The tension turned into something else entirely, but he ignored it. He smoothed out the red fabric along Harley’s neck so it blended with the rest of the suit.

“Could’ve just said you wanted to put your hands on me,” Harley said playfully, startling him. Peter slapped his shoulder and changed the subject.

“God, it’s weird to see someone else in the suit.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“How’s it feel?”

“...fucking tight, like I said. In all the wrong places.”

Peter laughed. “I don’t know what to tell you there. Okay, come on.”

Harley followed him out of Peter’s room. “Where we goin’?”

“The lab. Wanna show you something. Plus, it’ll be good for you to get comfortable in the suit, walking around.”

Peter slipped his portable webshooters out of his pocket and onto his wrists as they took the stairs down to the lab, letting the familiar metal snap into place.

Once inside, he swung up to the ceiling and began shooting webs in a pattern that had become comfortingly familiar.

“Whatcha doing there?”

Peter swung again and landed on the wall, shooting out a few more webs to fill in some gaps. It wasn’t long before the nest was done, this time built large enough to hold more than one person. He swung down to the floor.

“A web nest. Wanna see?” He grabbed onto Harley and swung up to the ceiling. Harley screamed.

“Oh, my god. Jesus Christ, Peter. I’m never doing that again.” 

“You’ll have to if you want to get down to the ground.”

“Isn’t the suit sticky? I could walk down the walls, right?”

“I mean, it’s kinda sticky, but most of the stickiness is me. So you could try. But you’d probably fall.”

“You’d catch me.”

“Would I?” Peter grinned, then beckoned Harley forward. “Come on. At least in the suit you shouldn’t stick to the webs.”

Harley carefully, on both knees, crawled more towards the center of the nest where the webs were layered thicker. He lay down gingerly, chest rising and falling rapidly. 

“Hey, you okay?”

Harley tugged the mask off and threw it in Peter’s general direction. “Yeah. Mmhmm. All good. Just need a second to — ”

“Okay, whoa, breathe. It’s okay.”

“Yep.” His breaths started slowing. Peter lay down next to him, careful not to disturb the web much. He could hear Harley’s heartbeats slow to a steadier rhythm. 

For a second, neither of them said anything. Peter watched Harley and Harley looked at the ceiling.

“This is kind of nice, once you realize you’re not gonna fall to your death. You do this often?”

“Mm, sometimes,” Peter said. “Mostly when I’m stressed out. I started doing it during the whole media scandal.”

Harley let out a long breath. “Wow. That feels like it was forever ago.”

Peter nodded in agreement. They lay there for a moment, a comfortable silence spreading between them. 

“So, how exactly does your being sticky act  _ through  _ the suit?”

Peter shrugged, the movement moving the web beneath them. “Not sure, honestly. I never gave it much thought. I don’t think I even know how spiders stick to walls, but probably something along that vein, right?”

“You mean to tell me you’re covered in setules?”

Peter spluttered for a second. “Sorry, what?”

“Setules… they’re like, the hairy little hooks on spiders that let them stick onto stuff,” Harley explained. “If you stick, you probably have something like that.”

“How did you know about that? Did you look up stuff about spiders because of your budding crush on Spider-Man —”

“You’d be surprised how much I know about animals,” Harley interrupted. “I grew up basically on a farm.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t farming  _ spiders _ .”

“How would you know?”

Peter smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t. I’ll have to come down to Rose Hill just to prove that you don’t farm spiders.”

“That’d be fun.” Harley paused. “You coming down to Tennessee, I mean. And I can show you noodling and how to ride a horse and —”

“Whoa. I’m not getting on a horse anytime soon.”

Harley winked at him. “We’ll see about that. If you can get me in the Spidey suit, I can get you on a horse.”

“Well, you have almost two weeks to get used to the feeling before Pride. Wanna practice shooting webs?”

“No,” said Harley. “If I move I’m gonna fall out of this web and break my neck.” He laughed, but it was tight.

“Are you okay? We can get down —”

“Nah, it’s fine. Just don’t like heights,” Harley said, sounding a little breathless. “I guess that comes with living on flat land your whole life, huh?”

“So is there  _ anything  _ good about Tennessee?” Peter asked jokingly.

Harley sat quietly for a second, and for a moment Peter thought he’d offended him. He was about to open his mouth to apologize when Harley said, quietly, “The stars.”

Peter cocked his head.

“You can’t really see the stars up here, with all the city lights. But in Rose Hill, on a clear night… you can see the whole Milky Way.”

Peter smiled at the wonder in Harley’s tone. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll have to show you one day.”

Taking his eyes off of Harley, Peter stared at the ceiling, imagining it as a dark velvet landscape dotted with stars and a dark stripe across the sky. He’d only ever seen the Milky Way in pictures. To see it in real life, to see it with  _ Harley  _ lying on the ground next to him like they were right now...

Peter kept smiling to himself. “I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'know when I started writing this I was like... how do I write slow burn? Turns out I didn't need to think about it too hard because I ended up accidentally writing 36k+ and they aren't together yet. Oh well ;P
> 
> Pride coming up next! Thank you for your lovely reviews as always :)


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